A sad end for one of the past decade's most innovative firms
Well, it looks as though Research in Motion has now officially entered the “fire-everyone-and-hope-for-the-best” phase. Former co-CEO Jim Balsillie was the biggest head to roll today but he was hardly alone. Via Crackberry, here’s the full scope of the carnage:
In addition, David Yach will be retiring from his role as CTO, Software after 13 years with the Company and after 4 years with the company and following an open dialogue on the future of global operations, Jim Rowan, COO, Global Operations, has decided to pursue other interests. The Company is currently undertaking a search to hire a single COO with responsibilities to run the Company’s operations.
“RIM would like to thank David Yach and Jim Rowan for their years of service and many contributions to RIM,” said Thorsten Heins, President and CEO. “We wish them well in their future pursuits.”
To make matters worse, RIM actually posted a $125 million loss in the fourth quarter of 2011. And while RIM’s new CEO Thorsten Heins is giving the usual positive spin on RIM’s upcoming BlackBerry 10 OS, it’s hard to see RIM making a big comeback even if the new platform blows away everyone’s expectations.
Why, you ask? Because RIM’s strongest asset — i.e., its comprehensive security policies and infrastructure — just aren’t as important to most people as they were back in RIM’s heyday of 2007. It turns out that the vast majority of workers bringing their devices to work with them simply don’t require the high levels of mobile security that has long been RIM’s bread and butter, and can simply get by with basics such as remote wipe, basic encryption and the ability to enforce password policies. Since high-end security features aren’t really top priorities, then the only thing RIM really had to differentiate itself was having the best physical keyboard of any other device on the market. But again, most people seem perfectly content with their large touchscreens, so RIM seems out of luck here as well.
RIM right now reminds me of the guy in late-19th century London who was working frantically to come up with an invention to clean up mass quantities of horse dung that he projected would be left in the streets in the coming years due to a large population spike. When cars came around a few years later, no one had any use for the poor guy’s dung-collection machine anymore because demand for horses had dropped significantly. Which is a roundabout way of saying that it isn’t so much that RIM did anything wrong, but that its core business strengths have been gradually eroded by evolving technology. At this point the company’s best hope for survival is probably to get bought out. And as a former BlackBerry user who has always had a soft spot for the company, I find this to be a sad development.
