RIM Almost Switched to Android, Says CEO

[invlem]

you dont need to "crank out 60 handsets a year" you just need to refresh your current handset ATLEAST ONCE A YEAR!

Oh, and TELL PEOPLE YOU'VE LAUNCHED A NEW PRODUCT, by far RIM's worst enemy is it's own marketing department, they release a phone and don't tell anyone about it.

When their competitors release phones the entire world knows about it 6 months in advance.....

MARKETING!! Learn it!

If you don't market your product, you will fail!

 

[Belardo]

[citation][nom]Zingam[/nom]Fragmentation means having many different sizes and hardware configurations. Android 4 does not help anything to eliminate that problem. And even if it did. It is available on only 1% of the devices and the manufacturers still continue pumping out Android 2.x devices. Android has failed to deliver a consistent, unified mobile OS (the way Windows is). With Android it is almost like having 500 different mobile OSes out there.[/citation] Pretty much any new modern phone has Android 4.x installed. Only bottom end phones may get a 2.3 because the CPU isn't powerful enough to deal with the advance features. Android 3.x was tablet.

Also, when you buy a NEW Android device, it states what brand of Android is installed. If you can't handle how to deal with it - perhaps you shouldn't be walking out of your home. Its mostly the very bottom end crappy tablets that still use 2.x in a tablet as 2.x was never designed for tablets. But even today, some cheap $120 tablets will use 4.0.

Android 4.0 is only any new phone for the past 2 months or so. Android apps run on 2.0~4.0, so the version number doesn't matter as much as you make it out to be.

WP7 devices won't run WP8 apps. BB10 is a completely different beast from previous BBOS. That is also fragmentation.

Somehow you think BBM can't be put on Android? Its up to RIM to do that if they want. And when you install apps on Android, the system tell you what hooks the software needs to functions. Granted, its not vetted. But that is something Google should try to do.

 

[Murissokah]

While there is no arguing Android has a much better market than RIM's OS right now, that does not mean switching to android would be RIM's best managerial decision. It could've been a good decision 3 years ago, right now it would seal RIM as an underdog with very little chance of turning the tides.

RIM is minding a basic management concept, that you should never fight against the top dog in his own game, instead create and maintain a market in which you can lead, however smaller that might be.

 

[NuclearShadow]

If I was RIM what I would do is start selling every single device at the cost of making it. Creating a extremely cheap to the consumer product that is comparable to competitors products. Then though the app store I would create the most generous business plan giving developers a larger % of their software sales than the competitors.

While this would mean lower profits at first it would attract both the consumer and developer base at the same time. This attraction would lead to a new consumer trend which would enable more app store sales where the profits sacrificed would be made back. App developers would also be made extremely happy at this time in which I would try to secure exclusive deals with the popular ones whether it be exclusive games/apps or content for such. Bringing the products to a must have over the competition.

But that's just me and as we all know RIM is allergic to success and avoids it.

 

[jurassic512]

[citation][nom]fuzzion[/nom]Headline should read" Blackberry almost made a good decision "[/citation]

Now if only every other company came to decisions as quick as you and others like you can with nothing more than an access to a couple public news articles, they would all be successful and every consumer would be forever in your debt.

*tries to cover his snickers*

 

[Cantisque]

I own an Android tablet and a Blackberry phone. I understand that the phones on Android run exactly the same OS (4.0) as the tablets. I have to say, I would much rather stick with Blackberry as a phone, even if there are not many apps for it, so I'm glad they didn't go for Android. All the essential stuff like the major messengers, Facebook, eBay, Twitter, they're all made by RIM rather than 3rd party devs, so you get a clean and consistent layout over all the apps with regular updates too. And of course, the BB hardware is excellent! People don't give these handsets enough credit.

 

[Antimatter79]

Pretty sad when the only feature the CEO can site that sets them apart is BBM. Sure, after years of only having BlackBerrys, I never could have imagined being without BBM....before I switched to Android. Guess that sums it up.

 

[Guest]

"Switch to Android"....that's a weird way to spell "save the company"

 

[meltbox360]

Bad reporting. RIM was talking about low end handsets with tiny margins. They want to get out of the low margin business and they cannot compete with the likes of zte and other low cost high volume android handset makers so it is better to partner with someone for their low end phones and keep the high end for themselves. Makes perfect sense. But Toms of course cannot be bothered to report all this.... I am a RIM fanboy I will admit but everyone blatantly misreports about RIM all the time smashing any "quality" perception that may remain. Very frustrating to watch public opinion swung for the worse by the media against RIM.

 

[meltbox360]

However i will admit that a large part of where they are is due to past management of the company. This is undeniable. It just is not cool to report just to make it appear they are falling apart. RIM never really considered android past going "How about android?" "No, too hard to stand out, next." Damn the way news is made. All for page views...

 

[frank_drebin]

guess what? nobody cares anymore about RIM

 

[Guest]

They thought about it. He never said they were that close to doing it. It would have been a big mistake because they would just have to compete with all of the Chinese knockoffs.

 

[eddieroolz]

I enjoy seeing the type of sheep mentality from Android zombies as well.

You notice the only Android maker doing well is Samsung, which produces nearly all the parts to a smartphone in-house. HTC, Sony and Motorola are all barely making money, or outright losing money. In not adopting Android, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsille's decision was probably the best one so far.