Jason Perlow delivers his eulogy for the dearly departed Research in Motion (RIM) and the BlackBerry product line.
Despite my history of strong criticism regarding Research in Motion, I never, ever wanted to see the company fail.
RIM, without a doubt, was one of Canada’s most important technology companies, if not the most important technology company in that country since the rise and fall of Nortel Networks.
Because the United States and Canada are inseparable allies and have economies and businesses which are in many ways co-dependent, the continued success of the most important technology company in Canada was critically important for our technology industry as well.
It’s key that we state the importance of what the company represented so that we understand the full extent of the loss when RIM does eventually meet its end.
While I am not the only member of the New Media that is eulogizing RIM while the company is still alive, I still intend to give it the respect that it is due.
RIM may not have been “United Statesian” in nationality, but it was an American company. And that means they are family, whether they fly the same flag at their corporate headquarters in Waterloo as us or not.
So when we see a company like RIM going through its death throes, like a beached whale, or a loved family member on life support who we know will never return to health, and that the inevitable is coming, it is a tragic occurrence.
And it is a particularly painful and traumatic thing to observe, especially when we have seen this sort of thing happen before.
Nobody who is an American wants to see this. Not me, not anyone who is a firm believer why continued innovation in technology must remain on this continent, and at more than just a handful of companies.
But we cannot say that we did not see this coming. Clearly, we knew that RIM was sick and its health was failing very early in 2011, particularly with the massive drop in market share starting in the summer of 2010 which has only gotten worse and worse.
However, the signs and portents leading up to the rapid deterioration of the company go back much, much earlier.
Also Read:
- Verizon iPhone, LTE Androids: Dark Clouds for RIM’s BlackBerry?
- iPad 2 versus BlackBerry PlayBook: Of Course You Realize, This Means War
- BlackBerry OS 7: How to Osborne your Smartphone Sales
- Attacking RIM’s Enterprise Beachhead: What iPhone, Android Need to Achieve Victory
- 10 Reasons Why the BlackBerry Torch Got Sent Back
- Storm 2: The Misfit BlackBerry
- Smartphone Evolution: Who’s the Biggest Loser?
- In Smartphone Wars, Darwinism Triumphs Over Intelligent Design
- Alas, poor BlackBerry, I knew him (2009)
When did things start to go terribly wrong for RIM? I’m going to have to say the moment that Apple launched the iPhone SDK and Developer Program, and created an App Store in the summer of 2008.
RIM’s failure to recognize this key ecosystem building strategy early on, and having to launch its own BlackBerry App World almost a year later was a critical mistake.
But it was only part of a long series of blunders by the company’s management that seemingly continue right up until the end of the story.
Another critical error was simply allowing its platform to rest on its laurels. OS 4 and OS 5 were already long in the tooth in 2007/2008 when the iPhone really began to surge in popularity.
That the company lacked modern mobile web browsing on its platform was a serious deficit as well, which it only partially remedied via its Torch Mobile acquisition in the summer of 2009.
RIM could not fully reap the rewards of Torch and its Iris Browser (which was written for Windows Mobile) until it could utilize its Webkit developers to produce a modern browser for OS 6, which launched on the BlackBerry Torch exactly a year later.
The Torch, however, was largely panned by critics as being underpowered compared to other smartphones on the market at the time, which included a phalanx of much more advanced Android devices that began to emerge onto the market in late 2009, beginning with the Android 2.x-based Motorola Droid on Verizon.
So now between the Droid on Verizon (and its many Froyo-based copies that would follow on various carriers in 2010) and the iPhone on AT&T, the seemingly invincible BlackBerry that was holding onto its Enterprise customers with an iron grip was now losing ground and being flanked on the largest growth market for smartphones, the consumer.
Indeed, my own personal separation from the BlackBerry collective occurred when I was forced into terminating my AT&T contract because my employer had to cut costs and instructed me to terminate my service.
I was being given a cheaper “dumb” phone on a more reliable provider, and that if I wanted a phone with data capabilities, I would have to go out and purchase one and pay for the data plan myself.
So it was in November of 2009, I found myself with a new Verizon Droid.
[Bring Your Own, The Attack of the Droids and QNX Quagmires]»
