RIM Director Scoffs At Your Idea of Hiring 'Children, Morons' After Being Hired 5 Years Ago to Stop RIM Free Fall Monday Feb 13 2012 12:35 EDT After product delays, multi-continent unexplained service outages, drunken employee scandals and consistently lackluster product offerings, Research in Motion (RIM) finally decided to shake up their CEO spot, replacing co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie with new CEO Thorsten Heins. Responding to criticism that Heins seems like "more of the same" for a company that has totally stagnated and is now on the verge of collapse, RIM chair Roger Martin (brought in five years ago to right the ship) gets a little defensive when talking to the Globe and Mail: quote: “I laugh at the vast majority of critics when they say ‘Oh, you should have made this CEO transition, like, four years ago.’ Yeah, right – like, to who?” Mr. Martin scoffs over lunch at Mideastro, a favourite restaurant in Toronto’s Yorkville. "n a rare outpouring of candour by a RIM director, he heaps scorn on the notion that the board should have hired a star outsider to re-energize RIM – a strategy that, he points out, failed abysmally at other stumbling tech giants, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard and, in its troubled 1980s, the now seemingly flawless Apple. So we’re supposed to hand it over to children, or morons from the outside who will destroy the company?” he says.
Children and morons (no offense to either) might field a better product. Arguing that because bringing in outside executive leadership didn't help at three companies is hardly a convincing argument for why RIM leadership sat on their hands as iOS and Android dominated the market. RIM's one shot at salvaging their reputation lies with their Blackberry 10 smartphones, which won't even reach market until 2013 -- and even then probably will be more of the same from a company that simply is no longer competitive. |
sk1939 Premium Member join:2010-10-23 Frederick, MD
1 recommendation |
sk1939
Premium Member
2012-Feb-13 12:39 pm
More of the SameThe definition of stupidity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. For being a reformist board Chairman, he really isn't doing the company a lot of good is he? | |
| | openbox9 Premium Member join:2004-01-26 71144 |
openbox9
Premium Member
2012-Feb-13 2:21 pm
Re: More of the Samesaid by sk1939:The definition of stupidity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. I thought that was the definition of insanity? I agree that promoting a new CEO from within seems silly on the surface, but the real proof won't materialize for several quarters. | |
| | | sk1939 Premium Member join:2010-10-23 Frederick, MD |
sk1939
Premium Member
2012-Feb-13 2:49 pm
Re: More of the SameThat too, although I think stupidity is better applied in this particular instance. | |
| | | Thaler Premium Member join:2004-02-02 Los Angeles, CA |
to openbox9
This move is insanity. Anyone buying stock in it is utilizing stupidity though. | |
|
amungus Premium Member join:2004-11-26 America |
amungus
Premium Member
2012-Feb-13 12:40 pm
meanwhile in the real world...Our BES continues to lose users... down to under 30, from ~70. By the end of this year, I don't see more than 2-5 users left on the thing. Oh, and BTW, we upgraded to 5.x right before our renewal for support came due... and have not renewed ...I get the feeling that other some other I.T. folks have also played this card... | |
| | |
itsmeagain
Anon
2012-Feb-13 2:19 pm
Re: meanwhile in the real world...If your BES is loosing users, I assume they are moving over to Android and/or IOS. Do you have a similar way of managing those devices? I couldn't figure out any... Those other two are just big security holes while BES is more or less still trust-worthy. I'm fearing the day if/when RIM goes out of business :-( | |
| | | openbox9 Premium Member join:2004-01-26 71144 |
openbox9
Premium Member
2012-Feb-13 2:27 pm
Re: meanwhile in the real world...Therein lies about the only failing of RIM's two main competitors. Until a backend management capability appears for Android and/or iOS that is at least as capable as the BES management, RIM will continue limping along. The day an equivalent capability arrives will be the day RIM truly struggles...all other things being equal. | |
| | | | amungus Premium Member join:2004-11-26 America |
amungus
Premium Member
2012-Feb-13 2:41 pm
Re: meanwhile in the real world...I do miss the nice mgmt. capabilities for iOS/Droid, yes. There are 3rd party tools that are similar, but I haven't tried any. (» www.zenprise.com/ comes to mind...) Exchange 2010 will allow remote wiping of a device, but seeing a quick global view of all users, and managing from there isn't really there in ESM. Looking at Zenprise again, I may have to more closely check this out. | |
| | | | |
to openbox9
Mobile Iron can manage Android/IOS/Windows Phone from a central location and has some pretty decent features. | |
|
| | |
to itsmeagain
Security is a huge concern when it come to Droid/iOS but there are some ways to improve this if you have the money, time and staff to accomplish it and I am not saying this is the answer but it is a start. I see the some of the big companies shelling out cash now to start moving towards these platforms and in the end this will most likely spin off a new market that will eventually become affordable for the smaller companies. Here is a link to one such company trying to build a management structure for Droid. » www.good.com/media/pdf/e ··· =androidThere are others out there for both types of environments and then there are those companies writing their own code for applications running on their own marketplace or app store (including security control). | |
|
mleland Premium Member join:2002-12-17 Westwood, CA |
mleland
Premium Member
2012-Feb-13 12:42 pm
Have a look at VMwareThey have done just fine after kicking out Diane (co-founder) and bringing in Paul Maritz (outsider!)
Diane was going to spend VMware (and EMC) into oblivion and she was mostly surrounded by people who were nothing more than "yes ma'am" people. Paul enters and changes the a lot of the executive team to people who know how to manage a large organization. | |
| |
I know very few Blackberry usersFWIW: One business type and one non-business individual. That's it. The rest are all on iThings and 'droids. Mostly 'droids. | |
| chlenEthically Challenged Premium Member join:2001-01-16 Saratoga, NY
1 recommendation |
chlen
Premium Member
2012-Feb-13 1:27 pm
hope for BBNever leave the BB in our model.
We all have personal androids and iPhones, but our users gravitate more nad more away from them in the field.
There is 2 massive reasons for this.
Black Berry (Bold Woldwide that we use) has a really long battery life and the easiest to use email and text interface. It is also a good phone. For 99% of our user that need email ASAP, and live by it and text, there is nothing there to compete with BB.
We really cant give a user that may not see a power outlet for a few days (aside from the charger in their car) anything else because the battery life simply is not there. With the VZ network and an international SIM, they have 1 device for anywhere they need to go. | |
| | Dennis Mod join:2001-01-26 Algonquin, IL
1 recommendation |
Dennis
Mod
2012-Feb-13 2:23 pm
Re: hope for BBAgreed. I've had all three (iPhone 2g, Various Android, etc) and nothing comes close to touching my Blackberry 9900 for work.
It's funny to me because when I got it I had to give up my Sony Ericsson Xperia x10a and I was super bummed about it cause I just upgraded to 2.2 and rooted it. Now I can't live without my BB for work. | |
|
Noah VailOh God please no. Premium Member join:2004-12-10 SouthAmerica |
BB has irrelevanted itselfI don't have any customers left using BlackBerrys. My last ones switched to Android over a year ago.
Throw RiM on the pile with Palm. Whatever anyone might feel about either, they've gone the way of the Amiga and OS2. | |
| Metatron2008You're it Premium Member join:2008-09-02 united state |
More shitty puns by yours truly.I can't help it, those with RIMJobs keep talking out their ass. | |
| | |
Re: More shitty puns by yours truly. | |
|
|
The saving grace for BlackBerryMight be consumers in developing countries. I have a co-worker in India and BB is huge over there, surprisingly (to me) among the teenagers who are all about BB messenger. Even if they lose the corporate business in the US and EU, if they can tap into consumer sales in places like India and Africa there could be an oppurtunity there to bounce back a bit.
For business though I don't really get why anyone would continue to invest in making mobile device managment more complicated and tied to a single platform. Exchange can natively support most common devices now and there are other managment platforms that have been mentioned above that are more flexible and probably cheaper than BB. | |
| not @comcast.net |
not
Anon
2012-Feb-13 5:11 pm
Amature Hour ContinuesLooks like Amature Hour is still well and alive in the land of RIM. Oh, how I can't wait until this company is over... | |
| cmarin join:2004-01-13 Boynton Beach, FL |
cmarin
Member
2012-Feb-14 10:17 am
iOS still has ways to goI just recently switched from a Bold to an iPhone as my company now allows us to get corporate email on the iPhone. I've been using it now for almost a month and do miss many things on my BB. For example, I was able to re-schedule conf. calls on my BB, which I can't do from iPhone. I was also able to browse the corp. directory and get phone numbers and have those people automatically added to the contacts on the phone....again, nothing like that for iPhone. Perhaps the biggest thing I've had to adjust to is the lack of the physical keyboard. I was never as good at the BB keyboard as some of the teens that can whip out entire novels in a few seconds, but I was proficient enough to write long emails with little effort. My emails are now a sentence or two at the most since I still can't get the "touch" feeling with the iPhone keyboard.
Lastly, I miss the reliability and battery life I had with my Bold. There was never a question about email...now, sometimes I get my email much later than my desktop email. As for battery life, I could go for two days before having to plug in the phone. I'm lucky if I get a full day out of this new 4S phone. Oh, and don't get me started with profiles... what garbage!!! Why can't I have different notifications for different email accounts? Now, when the thing beeps, I don't know if its my personal Gmail or my corporate email that is beeping..so I have to check.
Having said all this, I would not go back to a BB. Yes, those features made the phone great for work, but I now have a much more capable phone. I can RDP into my laptop if necessary, I can connect to FTP sites, and the mail client renders everything so much better than the BB. The Safari browser is leaps and bounds better than the BB browser (that thing reminds me of the early WAP browsers). iMessage is fantastic! I communicate with lots of people who have iPhones and now all those messages are free plus they have delivery confirmation. So I think eventually Apple is going to deliver some of the gaps that business users have identified and slowly but surely, kill off RIM. | |
|
| |
|
|