RIM is a ship heading for the rocks of a breakup

A great quote here from Guardian columnist Charles Arthur about where he thinks RIM, maker of the ubiquitous Blackberry is heading:

Heres what I think: RIM is heading for the breakers yard, as surely as a ship that has reached the end of its life. Within the next 18 months or so, the company is going to be broken up for its useful parts – BlackBerry Messaging, the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, its customers. The gravity that is sucking it downwards is now inescapable; to switch metaphors, its a spaceship trying to get out of a black hole, but it hasnt got Scotty aboard.

via RIM is a ship heading for the rocks of a breakup | Technology | guardian.co.uk.

I pretty much agree with his assessment, much like Nokia, RIM failed to see the threat from the Apple iPhone, and then the Google Android phones that followed it, and whilst Blackberry handsets did seem to end up as the cool handset to own for a little bit, they are now struggling to compete in a changed market, much as Nokia is doing. The difference with Nokia however is that RIM have the double whammy of the PlayBook their failed foray into the tablet market created by the launch of the Apple iPad, where quite apart from releasing an incomplete product lacking basic functionality, they also failed to understand what end users wanted. I’m quite sure elements of the Blackberry will survive, but I doubt RIM will exist in it’s current form for very much longer.

One thought on “RIM is a ship heading for the rocks of a breakup”

  1. RIM has strange culture and self distruct political environment.

    In RIM if a new hired person figure out major problem and introduce efficient approach, both manager and his buddy group member will proof their wrong approach works. just like someone point out driving a car is right way, pushing a car is wrong way, then both manager and his buddy group member will hate you, and proof that 3 person can also move the car by pushing it. cheating email will be sent to some vice president, saying like: see, the car moving, pushing a car is a natural part of the process, in order to deny new hired contribution of introducing skill of drive a car, they have to deny merit of driving a car.

    It is very strange company culture and strange company political environment, it promote stealing and cheating skill. RIM’s management may be a typical instance in MBA course.

    This culture deny or steal hardworking team members’ contribution/innovation, generate strange political environment, destroy RIM.

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