RIM

PlayBook gets email, but it’s still a piece of shit

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Roger Cheng: While RIM touts the ability to get e-mail, it’s actually using Exchange ActiveSync, and not the company’s own secure BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Without RIM’s secure network, the PlayBook’s e-mail access isn’t any better than what can already be … Continued

RIM director scoffs at BlackBerry critics

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RIM director Roger Martin speaking to the Globe and Mail:

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?

I guess the co-CEOs aren’t the only ones that need to go.

Apple is worth 56 RIMs

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Using today’s market cap numbers, Apple is worth $459.2 billion and RIM is worth $8.2. And RIM said in 2007 that the iPhone wouldn’t impact their business. Good call RIM.

New CEO: RIM needs better focus

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Peter Kafka for AllThingsD: Research In Motion isn’t broken, so no need to break it up. But it needs better internal focus, and better external focus, too. That’s the takeaway from new RIM CEO Thorsten Heins, who told analysts this … Continued

RIM faces legal challenge over ‘BBM’

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Reuters: Research In Motion, still smarting over having to change the name of its yet-to-come operating system, faces a similar trademark challenge to its popular instant-messaging service BlackBerry Messenger. Because things are going so well for RIM, they just needed … Continued

BlackBerry 10 doesn’t have email, BBM

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BGR:

In what is something of a serious allegation, our source told us that Mike Lazaridis was lying when he said the company’s new lineup was delayed for that reason. ”RIM is simply pushing this out as long as they can for one reason, they don’t have a working product yet,” we were told.

Of course RIM has denied what BGR’s source said. But then again, I don’t believe much of what RIM says these days.

They also said the PlayBook would deliver an amazing tablet experience. Amazingly bad.

Microsoft and Nokia look at buying RIM

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Networkworld:

The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Microsoft and Nokia have toyed with the idea of making a bid for RIM, whose stock has plummeted (from about $59 to start the year to about $14 in mid-December) and whose management team has been under fire from investors. The Journal reports that the status of any talks between Microsoft, Nokia and RIM are unclear. Other scuttlebutt is that RIM executives have hit up Samsung and HTC about possible licensing deals.

I may buy RIM with the spare change in my car.

RIM’s burning platform moment

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Matt Hartley:

After much consideration, he concluded that his company’s only hope was to abandon its long-held strategy, to acknowledge its shortcomings and embark on a radical new strategy. He ditched the company’s sputtering software business. He put teams to work developing new devices and he cut a billion-dollar software deal with one of the most powerful technology companies on the planet.

Unfortunately for the shareholders of Research In Motion Ltd., the Canadian smartphone executive’s name was not Jim Balsillie or Mike Lazaridis. It was Stephen Elop, the Hamilton-born chief executive of Finnish mobile giant Nokia Corp.

I don’t think RIM can do it. They need to fire the co-CEOs and bring in someone with some imagination to clean house and get the company back on track.

Robbers steal $1.7 million worth of PlayBooks

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Police are searching for someone who stole a semtrailer filled with $1.7 million worth of BlackBerry PlayBooks.

These are either the stupidest robbers ever, or more likely, RIM’s co-CEOs took a road trip. It is interesting to note that the truck was headed back to RIM’s headquarters in Ontario. Sounds like a truckload of returns to me.

RIM co-CEOs cut salary to $1

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Globe and Mail: Research In Motion Ltd.’s top executives cut their salaries to $1 as they delivered yet more dismal news to investors, telling the world the product that was supposed to save the company will come out almost a … Continued

I would like to thank RIM’s co-CEOs for their incompetence

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The holidays are approaching fast. It’s the time of the year where we take stock of the good (and bad) things that happened over the last 12 months, and figure out goals for the next year.

I would like to personally thank RIM’s co-CEOs for their complete and total incompetence in 2011. Without your lack of attention to the market and the details that would make a great product, my year wouldn’t have been so successful.

RIM screws up again

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John Paczkowski talking about the four things RIM had to deliver to Indonesia, including a regional data server:

RIM delivered on all four. But evidently it didn’t carry out the fourth in quite the way the BRTI wanted. It put the data center in Singapore, which is not geographically all that far, but a different country and not nearly as “regional” as the BRTI would like. Aggravating matters further, Indonesia has been asking for a local server for nearly three years.

Now Indonesia is threatening to shutdown RIM’s operations. Seriously folks, I could not make this stuff up.

Drunk RIM execs chewed through restraints on the plane

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CBC:

New details are emerging about the rowdy behaviour of two Research In Motion executives who were fired for disrupting an intercontinental flight — including that they managed to chew their way out of restraints after being handcuffed by crew members.

Clearly these two worked on the PlayBook. What else could possibly account for such frustration.

PlayBook is an ‘albatross’

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Businessweek:

Lazaridis said at the time the PlayBook was worth continuing because the tablet market is still “in its infancy and that “based on the positive response to the promotions that are underway in select markets, RIM believes this strategy will accelerate adoption” of its new operating system and help built the application ecosystem for devices planned for 2012.

RIM failed to plan for the future while it controlled the smartphone market years ago. Then it lied to its users and the market and said the PlayBook was planned all along — it didn’t take a genius to see that the PlayBook was thrown together at the last minute to mitigate a threat from the iPad.

RIM misses Q3 guidance on slow PlayBook sales

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From RIM’s advisory this morning:

As previously disclosed, RIM has a high level of BlackBerry PlayBook inventory. The Company now believes that an increase in promotional activity is required to drive sell-through to end customers. This is due to several factors, including recent shifts in the competitive dynamics of the tablet market and a delay in the release of the PlayBook OS 2.0 software. As a result, RIM will record a provision that reflects the current market environment and allows it to expand upon the aggressive level of promotional activity recently employed by the Company in order to drive PlayBook adoption around the world.

Drunk RIM employees disrupt flight

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The Star: George Campbell, 45, of Conestogo, Ont., and Paul Alexander Wilson, 38, of Kitchener, pleaded guilty to one charge of mischief in Richmond Provincial Court on Wednesday. They were each given suspended sentences and one year’s probation, and ordered … Continued

RIM to offer security software for iPhone, Android

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Alastair Sharp for Reuters: The company said on Tuesday that it will launch its new Mobile Fusion device management software in the first quarter, allowing corporate IT staff to set and monitor rules for passwords, apps and software on a … Continued

∞ Corporate necrophilia

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Ina Fried: RIM, for its part, says it has licensed Adobe’s source code and plans to continue supporting Flash on the PlayBook. As Matt Alexander said to me today: “Dying companies working with dead products? It’s like corporate necrophilia.”