Playbook exec leaves RIM for Samsung

[BlahBlahYouToo]

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/BlackBe...n-Bidan-PlayBook-Discontinued,news-11920.html

could it get any worse for RIM?
the phones suck. the playbook is DOA. the execs know it and are jumping ship.

 

[xSauronx]

didnt know the playbook did so bad that there are rumors it will be discontinued

too little, too late for RIM.

 

[DivideBYZero]

didnt know the playbook did so bad that there are rumors it will be discontinued

too little, too late for RIM.

More BGR bullshit. The Playbook isn't being discontinued.

 

[gsaldivar]

More BGR bullshit. The Playbook isn't being discontinued.

It may or may not be... nobody knows for certain what will happen to the Playbook. But it's quite clear that RIM's executives seem to be voting with their feet on the project, and the company's direction in general...

"BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. said Friday its chief marketing officer [Keith Pardy] has decided to leave the company—just weeks ahead of one of its most significant product rollouts in years ... The departure of Mr. Pardy, who was hired from Nokia Corp. in early 2009, deprives the smartphone maker of a marketing chief during the crucial lead-up to the launch of its PlayBook tablet ..."

"Research in Motion is losing another marketer, Brian Wallace, a day after reporting dismal earnings and impending layoffs ... Mr. Wallace oversaw all things digital at RIM as VP-digital marketing and media ... Mr. Wallace's departure follows chief marketer Keith Pardy, who resigned in March, weeks ahead of the launch of RIM's iPad competitor, Playbook. After that departure, co-CEO Jim Balsillie took on the CMO role..."

"another well-known RIM employee is packing up and leaving Waterloo for Dallas, Texas ... Ryan Bidan, formerly a Senior Product Manager on the BlackBerry PlayBook team, posted on his Twitter and LinkedIn today that he's now going to be working for Samsung Telecommunications USA as a Director of Product Marketing..."

 

[BeauJangles]

More BGR bullshit. The Playbook isn't being discontinued.

No, it isn't about to be discontinued, but it certainly isn't looking good.

Instead of shipping 2.4 million PlayBooks in the second quarter, RIM now expects to ship between 800,000 and 900,000 units, supply chain sources tell the news site. RIM had also initially expected to ship the same 2.4 million PlayBooks in its launch quarter, but the company revealed last week that it only managed to ship 500,000 units.

They're more than halving the number of units they are planning to ship. RIM needs these next generation of phones (supposedly coming this year) to be otherworldly-awesome.

 

[gsaldivar]

They're more than halving the number of units they are planning to ship. RIM needs these next generation of phones (supposedly coming this year) to be otherworldly-awesome.

More detail on the 500,000-unit Playbook miracle:

"As far as the PlayBook is concerned, RIM’s initial 500,000 shipments weren’t even sold at full margin. “RIM’s thought process was that they hoped if they put a product in a carrier’s hands that was less than full margin, it would entice the carriers to apply whatever number of discounts against that to bring it to market at an even lower price — a subsidy on the tablet. RIM isn’t making any money on the PlayBook.”

"To complicate matters, however, Jim Balsillie told the carriers at the 11th hour that the PlayBook wouldn’t have native email and would require the Bridge app in order to receive emails and provide calendar functions. “RIM is notorious for dropping these bombshells at the 11th hour on the carriers, and the PlayBook not having native email was a shock to the carriers.” They were all expecting a BlackBerry with a bigger screen.

RIM was hoping to blow through the 500,000 units and have carriers take orders for millions of additional PlayBooks, but that has not happened yet..."

 

[QueBert]

RIM doesn't have MS money laying around. MS was able to keep pushing the Xbox even when they were losing billions from it. I would be surprised if we see a Playbook 2, numbers don't lie, and the numbers here are pitiful. Regardless of how much they could improve a Playbook 2, it would more than likely sell no more, maybe even less than the current 1. The product's actually pretty cool I played with it at Staples. But it's still headed to the grave. With newer Android tablets getting better and the iPad 3 coming next year, I don't see how RIM will possibly release a 2nd gen Playbook.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

They have over $2 billion in cash and are throwing off more. They have plenty of money to invest in more failed products.

 

[shortylickens]

Whats really fuckin funny is any one of us could have told them (for free) how the make the damn thing successful:
EMAIL!

Dumb bastards. What were they thinking?

 

[LegendKiller]

It's sad how such a revolutionary company could have failed so miserably when having such a dominant market position. They simply got lazy and thought the enterprise market would lead to better sales in the regular commercial chain, halting innovation. I hate every BB I've ever had except for one of the older scroll wheel color ones. The trackball sucked, the trackpad sucks, their touchscreen implementation blows. The software is slow, startup takes over 5 minutes. The phones are built like shit with all of this paint and coating that eventually scratches off. It's like they operate on the inverse of Apple's 99% rule, fail to deliver on 99% of the market "wants" and deliver on 1% of the enterprise historical needs to keep the market going.

It's akin to the US auto manufacturers. Quite sad really.

 

[alent1234]

See ford vs gm almost 100 years ago. Repeated over and over

 

[3chordcharlie]

It's sad how such a revolutionary company could have failed so miserably when having such a dominant market position. They simply got lazy and thought the enterprise market would lead to better sales in the regular commercial chain, halting innovation. I hate every BB I've ever had except for one of the older scroll wheel color ones. The trackball sucked, the trackpad sucks, their touchscreen implementation blows. The software is slow, startup takes over 5 minutes. The phones are built like shit with all of this paint and coating that eventually scratches off. It's like they operate on the inverse of Apple's 99% rule, fail to deliver on 99% of the market "wants" and deliver on 1% of the enterprise historical needs to keep the market going.

It's akin to the US auto manufacturers. Quite sad really.

Other than being completely wrong about everything you said here, I completely agree (that RIM focused on the wrong market).

 

[QueBert]

Other than being completely wrong about everything you said here, I completely agree (that RIM focused on the wrong market).

He's right about many things, I had a Pearl and the paint sucked and it took longer to boot than anything I've ever come across. If I unplug my Charter cable box it'll reboot before a Pearl does, that's pretty sad

 

[Pliablemoose]

Death of a thousand cuts.

I wonder which one wrote the letter BGR printed. I'm sure there was a witch hunt for the guy...

 

[LegendKiller]

Other than being completely wrong about everything you said here, I completely agree (that RIM focused on the wrong market).

Yeah, sure. I've had several BBs for work, starting 7 years ago. I've seen them "evolve" and utterly fail to keep up with the market. The software is garbage and the hardware is minimalistic. It's ridiculous that startup takes 5 min.

 

[Imp]

Whats really fuckin funny is any one of us could have told them (for free) how the make the damn thing successful:
EMAIL!

Dumb bastards. What were they thinking?

The sad thing is that 3 months later, they still don't have it. Something something stalling for security.... Idiocy....

And the longterm marketing director that quit before the Playbook launch kind of sucked.

 

[DivideBYZero]

The sad thing is that 3 months later, they still don't have it. Something something stalling for security.... Idiocy....

And the longterm marketing director that quit before the Playbook launch kind of sucked.

Waiting for FIPS compliance isn't really idiocy... The cryptographic kernel they get approved for the PlayBook now will be the same one used in QNX phones, meaning approval will be fast tracked for Phone devices.

 

[3chordcharlie]

Yeah, sure. I've had several BBs for work, starting 7 years ago. I've seen them "evolve" and utterly fail to keep up with the market. The software is garbage and the hardware is minimalistic. It's ridiculous that startup takes 5 min.

Startup does not take 'over 5 minutes'; it takes about 2-3. It's also rarely needed. My last BB regularly ran for months at a time without a reboot of any sort, so startup time is hardly an issue.

 

[DivideBYZero]

PlayBook takes 1m 15 seconds to boot from cold. OS6 devices take less than two from cold, but yeah it's nice to have another RIM bashing thread with the usual suspects.

You can all return to the Android/iOS dog and pony show now.

 

[BeauJangles]

PlayBook takes 1m 15 seconds to boot from cold. OS6 devices take less than two from cold, but yeah it's nice to have another RIM bashing thread with the usual suspects.

You can all return to the Android/iOS dog and pony show now.

Personally, I'm not rooting for RIM's failure. More competition is better.

I do see major problems for them, one of the biggest being something nobody has touched on: the military. The US military is very interested in deploying smartphones and tablets in the battlefield. In fact, these devices are already in use, with many soldiers choosing to use their own devices. Anyway, the military's push for smartphones and tablets has been built solely on Android because of its open architecture and because companies like Panasonic (who the military trusts because of its Toughbook line) are willing / able to manufacture the phones.

In itself, this isn't a huge loss for RIM, but the cryptography that is going to be baked into military versions of Android are going to be very, very appealing for businesses and IT departments. I just see this venture as the avenue that could put Android headsets directly into the IT world that BB has dominated.

 

[3chordcharlie]

Personally, I'm not rooting for RIM's failure. More competition is better.

I do see major problems for them, one of the biggest being something nobody has touched on: the military. The US military is very interested in deploying smartphones and tablets in the battlefield. In fact, these devices are already in use, with many soldiers choosing to use their own devices. Anyway, the military's push for smartphones and tablets has been built solely on Android because of its open architecture and because companies like Panasonic (who the military trusts because of its Toughbook line) are willing / able to manufacture the phones.

In itself, this isn't a huge loss for RIM, but the cryptography that is going to be baked into military versions of Android are going to be very, very appealing for businesses and IT departments. I just see this venture as the avenue that could put Android headsets directly into the IT world that BB has dominated.

US military really has a choice between 'Android' and 'Build it ourselves from the ground up for $6 billion'.

Apple isn't going to share, and isn't particularly security-minded, and RIM, which is extremely security-minded, makes reliable devices that work well on poor connections, etc, is a foreign company. Not likely to happen.

 

[LegendKiller]

Startup does not take 'over 5 minutes'; it takes about 2-3. It's also rarely needed. My last BB regularly ran for months at a time without a reboot of any sort, so startup time is hardly an issue.

Please, it does so. My Bold 9650 just took 5:40 to get to the VZ splash screen, 6:10 to load the security aspect, and 7:58 before it could actually be used without lags due to loading. Because of bugs in the software I have to reboot at least once every 2 weeks and the delay is annoying and unacceptable in modern times.

 

[3chordcharlie]

Please, it does so. My Bold 9650 just took 5:40 to get to the VZ splash screen, 6:10 to load the security aspect, and 7:58 before it could actually be used without lags due to loading. Because of bugs in the software I have to reboot at least once every 2 weeks and the delay is annoying and unacceptable in modern times.

There's *likely* something wrong with your phone. Every BB I've used, which does not include the 9650, loaded in ~2 minutes, with ~0 lag once the security test was passed.

OK, every BB except the Storm, which was awful in every possible way, but still handled email better than competing phones.

For me that's 83xx, 9300, 9000, 9700, 9780, all with no issues, and no reboots except due to updates.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

He's right about many things, I had a Pearl and the paint sucked and it took longer to boot than anything I've ever come across. If I unplug my Charter cable box it'll reboot before a Pearl does, that's pretty sad

the best part is the battery life that's lost while it's booting.
i swear i've seen it drop 20% just on a battery pull.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

There's *likely* something wrong with your phone. Every BB I've used, which does not include the 9650, loaded in ~2 minutes, with ~0 lag once the security test was passed.

OK, every BB except the Storm, which was awful in every possible way, but still handled email better than competing phones.

For me that's 83xx, 9300, 9000, 9700, 9780, all with no issues, and no reboots except due to updates.

nope, nothing wrong with his.
my S2 with the latest VZ approved firmware also takes 5 minutes.