Holy crap, have you seen this open letter from a RIM employee?

[poofyhairguy]

RIM's multipart response:

Step 1. We stick our fingers in our ears.

Step 2. We all then sing "LA LA LA LA, WE CAN'T HEAR YOU."

FIFThem

 

[Ns1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_waste

Its pretty crappy the way the west deals with its waste. You can look up the gory details yourself.

DO WANT

 

[preslove]

He should writing cover letters, refining his resume, and applying to competitors, not writing an open letter within his dying company...

 

[WelshBloke]

DO WANT

Personally I'm just going to keep sending my obsolete stuff to landfills and feel slightly guilty over it.

This gives me more of an excuse to buy pointless new stuff and also enjoy drinking slightly more beer than I need as well.

 

[Ns1]

n/m

 

[poofyhairguy]

Oh and Apple were aloud to have been a bit half arsed with the first iPhone. There wasn't really anything to compete with it. Every other smartphone OS was obsessed with functionality rather than user experience and the general public didnt have any idea what a smartphone could or should do. Thats one of the reasons MS got lambasted for not having CP when Apple got away with it. People now expect all the functionality as well as a great user experience.

Wow, that is a great point I never thought of.

iOS (and to a lessor extent Android) were allowed to grow and mature IN THE MARKET because nothing else came close to either of them years ago.

Now any competitor in that space doesn't get that advantage- if has to be fully mature the day it launches.

Look at WM7. Its current version is much further along than iOS or Android was at that point in their development, yet many are not considering getting a WM7 phone until the mature Mango version because quite simply we are all spoiled by mature iOS and Android and we are not willing to leave off key features like in the first iPhone days.

RIM has to launch not just a new mobile OS, but one that needs to be mature and ready to go in the first or second gen of products with will feature parity with the mature systems. Heck, HP had the same challenge and had an ever bigger head start than RIM, and they failed.

 

[Ns1]

Look at WM7. Its current version is much further along than iOS or Android was at that point in their development, yet many are not considering getting a WM7 phone until the mature Mango version because quite simply we are all spoiled by mature iOS and Android and we are not willing to leave off key features like in the first iPhone days.

My first "smartphone" was a WM phone. God it sucked SO BAD I cancelled the internet after a few months.

When I got my first iPhone (3gs) it completely changed the way I view phones. Prior to the iPhone, the phone was simply a tool I occasionally used and constant internet was "nice" to have.

Now I'm married to my phone and I couldn't imagine NOT having a smartphone. I'm open to the idea of Android if the right phone comes along, but as time passes it becomes a harder and harder proposition since I become more and more invested in the iOS ecosystem.

 

[yllus]

Really poor response by RIM to that letter. Very disappointing.

 

[preslove]

Wow, that is a great point I never thought of.

iOS (and to a lessor extent Android) were allowed to grow and mature IN THE MARKET because nothing else came close to either of them years ago.

Now any competitor in that space doesn't get that advantage- if has to be fully mature the day it launches.

Look at WM7. Its current version is much further along than iOS or Android was at that point in their development, yet many are not considering getting a WM7 phone until the mature Mango version because quite simply we are all spoiled by mature iOS and Android and we are not willing to leave off key features like in the first iPhone days.

RIM has to launch not just a new mobile OS, but one that needs to be mature and ready to go in the first or second gen of products with will feature parity with the mature systems. Heck, HP had the same challenge and had an ever bigger head start than RIM, and they failed.

Yeah, this is probably going to kill RIM and HP(alm). HP's only chance with WebOS is to license it and let HTC, Moto, Samsung etc add functionality. If WebOS survives as a platform long enough to forbid the custom OS's, great, but I'm skeptical that it will succeed.

 

[Ns1]

Really poor response by RIM to that letter. Very disappointing.

"The company is thankfully in a solid business and financial position to tackle the opportunities ahead with a solid balance sheet (nearly $3 billion in cash and no debt)"

WOW if true. 3bn cash w/ no debt is no laughing matter.

 

[Deeko]

"The company is thankfully in a solid business and financial position to tackle the opportunities ahead with a solid balance sheet (nearly $3 billion in cash and no debt)"

WOW if true. 3bn cash w/ no debt is no laughing matter.

That's why I keep saying that, no matter what you think of their current products, RIM is not in as dire a position as some would have you believe. They have money, and they've been making money. Their overall marketshare is sliding, but that's misleading - the market itself is growing rapidly, so RIM can lose its % of the market while still selling a lot of phones.

They have work to do, but they have the resources and the time to do it.

 

[WelshBloke]

My first "smartphone" was a WM phone. God it sucked SO BAD I cancelled the internet after a few months.

I loved WMphone. I could get it to do anything, and usually for free. Sure the stock UI was clunky as hell and you really had to know what you were doing to get the best out of it, but once you learned how it all worked it was awesome.

When I got my first iPhone (3gs) it completely changed the way I view phones. Prior to the iPhone, the phone was simply a tool I occasionally used and constant internet was "nice" to have.

Now I'm married to my phone and I couldn't imagine NOT having a smartphone. I'm open to the idea of Android if the right phone comes along, but as time passes it becomes a harder and harder proposition since I become more and more invested in the iOS ecosystem.

This is where RIM is going to have problems.

I now use Android, its as versatile as WMphone and lets me geek out.

You're happy with IOS and the Apple way of sleek user experience and out of the box functionality.

Theres not a lot of space left in the market. Competing against both Apple and Google wouldn't be easy at the best of times but when they are both already well established its got to be horrible.

And before anyone says it, this is NOT the same market that RIM did so well in. The smartphone market has changed out of all recognition.

 

[Ns1]

I loved WMphone. I could get it to do anything, and usually for free. Sure the stock UI was clunky as hell and you really had to know what you were doing to get the best out of it, but once you learned how it all worked it was awesome.

web browsing sucked on it and it sucked as a porn consumption device. POS xv6700

:shudders:

goddamn those stylus days...might as well refer to them as the dark ages.

 

[WelshBloke]

web browsing sucked on it and it sucked as a porn consumption device. POS xv6700

*snip*

:shudders:

goddamn those stylus days...might as well refer to them as the dark ages.

I use the same browser now on Android as I did on WMphone (opera Mobile) so there isnt that much difference in the internet (apart from screen res but thats nothing to do with the OS).

Oh and I'd have thought that Coreplayer would have handled all your porn needs, it plays just about anything.

 

[MrX8503]

Honestly, I wouldn't miss RIM if they were to go the way of the Dodo bird just like Symbian. They would have kept us consumers in the dark ages for years without any innovation.

Thank goodness for iOS and Android to shake things up. Thinking back years ago, smartphones were pieces of junk!

EDIT:

Add to this that developers are dropping support for RIM in droves, RIM has a lot of work to do. Without developers, I don't see RIM ever competing with the other OS's.

 

[DivideBYZero]

LULZ if anyone really thinks this 'employee' is 'high up'. If it's true, which is looking doubtful, then if you were high up you wouldn't be moaning about 'directors & VPs' getting jobs due to long service, you'd actually BE the VP.

It may well be a disgruntled RIM employee, but just parroting the current anti-RIM sentiment in the press right now and telling them what they already know doesn't really sound like a death knell to me. It does sound like the newly comercialized BGR is wanting big stories for hits though.

 

[badb0y]

OT: Found this funny from the OP's link:

Not really. Had RIM adopted the DROID OS they would be all profits right now.

Verizon marketing FTW.

 

[runawayprisoner]

RIM's response:

I read that as pretty much:

1) Who the hell posted this?
2) We top execs are very much trying to "address this issue/person".
3) We are very rich and capable of "addressing said issue/person".

Looks like they didn't take that letter too well. Who can "engage in a constructive manner" when words like "ulterior motivations" are thrown around? They are trying too hard to be formal and threatening at the same time, me thinks.

 

[Pliablemoose]

Now RIM mgmt will go on a witch hunt to try to figure out who wrote the letter rather than deal with the issues brought up... Just like they've been doing for the last 5 years.

What's going on now is the brand is being tarnished, stock price dropping, market cap massively reduced, they can fend off a takeover attempt or 2, but it will cost them dearly, and leave them in a weakened state.

There are 100 Gordon Gecko's out there, trying to figure out how to take RIM down right now. The co CEOs are going to offer some moronic changes to the management structure that will have little effect on how jacked management is at RIM.

We're about to see RIM ripped to shreds and the bit parts sold off.

Investors have watched their money disappear, and someone's going to get publicly hung...

 

[MrX8503]

I finally read RIM's response....and RIM isn't taking this issue seriously. They are just as arrogant as ever even back when they dropped the ball for not responding to the iPhone onslaught back in 2007.

For this and being crappy managers, I hope RIM has a slow painful death. Nokia, MS, and Palm are all working towards evolving to stay afloat, while RIM thinks everything is fine.

 

[DivideBYZero]

Again, I love how you will believe a blogger so quickly. It's pretty laughable.

 

[finbarqs]

well... maybe RIM has bigger ideas... They just don't wanna share with their employees

 

[DivideBYZero]

Not all ideas are shared with all employees. This is true of all companies. To assume that RIM would disseminate ALL product and timeline information to all employees, especially during a transitional period is pretty amazing. So many people in this thread fail to understand much about business. All they see is a weakness, and they're tearing at the wound trying to make it bleed more for thier enjoyment.

There is little value in this letter or this thread. The letter reveals nothing that anybody hasn't been saying for months; New UE, new UI, updated OS, engage Devs, etc. As I said before, it's mroe likely this is completely made up by BGR to support their recent comercialization and sale. The new owners of BGR want some return. What better than to come up with a 'scoop'?

To put it into perspective, Apple don't tell anyone in the company what they are doing if they are not on the critical path. Why should RIM be telling all to Employees right at the bottom of the pile all secrets, especially when you may have people like this 'guy' who will just blab it to a raft of blogs?

Anyway, what would I know, I only know employees in both Apple and RIM, whereas nearly all posters in here are just clique-y nerds deriding anything that is not a device of their choosing.

 

[dougp]

Not all ideas are shared with all employees. This is true of all companies. To assume that RIM would disseminate ALL product and timeline information to all employees, especially during a transitional period is pretty amazing. So many people in this thread fail to understand much about business. All they see is a weakness, and they're tearing at the wound trying to make it bleed more for thier enjoyment.

There is little value in this letter or this thread. The letter reveals nothing that anybody hasn't been saying for months; New UE, new UI, updated OS, engage Devs, etc. As I said before, it's mroe likely this is completely made up by BGR to support their recent comercialization and sale. The new owners of BGR want some return. What better than to come up with a 'scoop'?

To put it into perspective, Apple don't tell anyone in the company what they are doing if they are not on the critical path. Why should RIM be telling all to Employees right at the bottom of the pile all secrets, especially when you may have people like this 'guy' who will just blab it to a raft of blogs?

Anyway, what would I know, I only know employees in both Apple and RIM, whereas nearly all posters in here are just clique-y nerds deriding anything that is not a device of their choosing.

 

[MrX8503]

Again, I love how you will believe a blogger so quickly. It's pretty laughable.

Whether or not the open letter was real, RIM's response was real.