To say that RIM has had a tough time these past few months is an understatement, and today’s news probably won’t help raise the morale around Waterloo. According to AppleInsider, oilfield services giant Halliburton will soon be migrating their BlackBerry-toting workforce to run exclusively on a new fleet of iPhones.
Update: RIM updated their blog to state that the images and characters in question are were meant to be a bit of fun, and not the vanguard of the company’s new marketing plan.
Way back in December, before a management shakeup saw him and his partner leaving RIM’s top posts, co-CEO Jim Balsillie lamented the state of the company’s marketing efforts. They hadn’t “achieved the desired results” as he put it during RIM’s Q4 earnings call, and promised big things to come on the marketing front come 2012.
Things seemed to start off well — you couldn’t watch Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve without getting an eye-full of BlackBerry logos imploring you to “be bold” in in the new year. → Read More
Whether a “drastic change” is needed or there is already “a lot of change”, former RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis (the same one who flipped out on the BBC during an interview) still believes in the BlackBerry.
Forget the fact that the company’s figures are half what they were at the beginning of 2011, and never mind the fact that the stock dropped 8 percent on the first day that new CEO Thorsten Heins was at his post. Lazaridis still thinks a $50 million investment in RIM stock (from out of his pocket) is well worth it. → Read More
Microsoft and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) are teaming up today on the public release of BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365, a name which surely Microsoft itself had a hand in creating. The new service will allow corporate customers to manage their deployed BlackBerry devices using Exchange Online, the hosted version of Microsoft’s messaging platform.
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On Monday of this week, RIM’s new CEO made a statement that set off a bomb on the blogosphere, and I’m not sure he understood its repercussions at the time. “I don’t think any drastic change is needed.”
If you’ve been paying attention to RIM and its numbers, you know that what the company desperately needs is change. Sales are declining, platform market share is dwindling, and the BlackBerry brand, to a large extent, has lost the power it once had behind it. So in a recent interview with CrackBerry, Heins made sure to clarify exactly what he meant by “no drastic change is needed.” → Read More
For the second time over the course of a year, it would seem as though Sprint’s ready to kill the BlackBerry PlayBook. A new version of the PlayBook OS is set to debut in February, but according to an EOL (End of Life) report out of SprintFeed, Sprint isn’t prepared for the wait. Not even for a week.
Of course, the WiFi-only PlayBook will still be available at various office stores like Best Buy and from RIM directly, but Sprint’s execution of the PlayBook marks the end of the product’s life on a carrier shelf. → Read More
It’s only been one full day since former COO Thorsten Heins has taken the top spot at RIM, and we may already be privy to the company’s game plan for the next 15 months. According to reports from BGR‘s always-willing sources, RIM is hard at work on a series of new product launches that will culminate with the launch of their first BlackBerry 10 device in the latter half of this year. → Read More
Whenever a company appoints new leadership here in the tech world, the blogosphere seems to unanimously post about what the new top dog needs to do to make his or her company better. I promise, you’ll see dozens of headlines today talking about what Thorsten Heins must do in order to save BlackBerry.
In many cases, I agree with what’s being said. RIM’s in trouble, and without a new vision the company risks slipping even further behind the competition. You know… “the other fruit company.”
So rather than list out all of the things Heins needs to do to save the company (which, we can all agree, would take a really long time), I’m going to tell you guys the five things that Mr. Heins absolutely must not, without a doubt, under no circumstances… do.
That is, if RIM wants to keep selling smartphones. → Read More
Good news: You’ve been promoted to CEO! Bad news: Public perception of your company has tanked over the past few years, and your stockholders are looking at you to save the day. What ever you do first, just hope that you don’t give the world that sound bite that suggests you think everything is okay and that nothing at the company needs to change. Whoops!
Less than 24 hours after RIM’s executive shakeup, the company is already seeing its first “drastic change”: its stock price. → Read More
RIM’s new CEO Thorsten Heins has only been at the reigns for an evening, but he did a very “BlackBerry” job of presenting himself to the media this morning on his introductory media call.
It felt a lot like the media calls of yore, with Balsillie and Lazaridis at the helm. Especially when Heins referred to Apple as “the other fruit company,” noting the two companies shared strategy of vertical integration. Unfortunately, vertical integration of software and hardware is about all that these two fruits have in common.
Remember folks, Heins is coming off of a four-year stint at RIM. At the relatively young company, Heins worked under founder Mike Lazaridis and his partner in crime Jim Balsillie. That said, you can basically hear Lazaridis-style hubris in Heins’ comments.
When asked if there was anything Heins wanted to do in the past, but was held back from by his position, Heins confirms that he (along with the freshly removed prior leadership) doesn’t see much wrong with RIM. → Read More
It was a big day for football fans, with both the AFC and NFC Championships taking place this afternoon and this evening. The games grab more than a few eyeballs every year — last year’s championships grabbed 54.8 million and 51.9 million viewers, respectively. While the numbers aren’t out yet for today’s games, the viewership is expected to be equally as enormous.
That’s why so many in the Twittersphere have been so quick to point out that, nestled quietly behind a hotly contested NFC Championship between the New York Giants and the San Francisco 49ers, and an equally great game over in the AFC, was a fairly huge announcement for the maker of BlackBerry, Research In Motion. During Championship Sunday, RIM quietly released a statement saying that its co-CEOs, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, are stepping down and will be replaced by current COO for products and sales, Thorsten Hein. → Read More
I suppose some might have seen this coming. In December, Research In Motion (RIM) released their third quarter earnings, which were yet another disappointment for the struggling maker of BlackBerry. RIM Co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis announced subsequently that they would only draw yearly salaries of $1 to help combat the company’s financial woes.
Today, it seems the pressure has become too great, and a management shuffle is under way. The Globe has reported that the co-CEOs, after a year of pressure from investors and stockholders, have stepped down from the position. Company insider and current COO Thorsten Heins will be replacing them as the new chief executive. → Read More
Peter Rojas published a thought-provoking piece about RIM and BlackBerry 10. He said, in short, that the Canadian company should wipe out Blackberry OS and run Android or Windows or, barring that, sell out completely and offer a software package running on another OS. While both of those are logical positions, I think RIM will end up in far worse shape than those options allow.
RIM is popular for three reasons: the keyboard, BBM, and the back-end software. For most of this decade, IT shops have been able to send out fleets of BlackBerry products without concern simply because there was nothing better for email and messaging. Over the past three years, however, that claim has gone completely out the window. I would reckon that a nice IMAP server install is far easier and cheaper than any BB Enterprise Server ever was and, given this screenshot from the actual BBES “purchase” page, there is a lot of sales pressure involved. → Read More
When RIM first launched the BlackBerry PlayBook last spring, we were all rather shocked to find that RIM’s stand-out core services — secure messaging and productivity related apps like calendar and contacts — were… absent. The company promised an update to fix it, and after eight months said update has finally been unveiled here at CES. → Read More
As RIM navigates some particularly rough seas, it appears as though the company may soon kick-off a good old-fashioned corporate governance shakeup in order to please their shareholders. Although they’ll retain their positions as co-CEOs, the Financial Post reports that RIM’s Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie may soon be ousted from their positions as chairmen of the board.
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Well, if you were hoping to snag a BlackBerry PlayBook on the cheap, it looks like now’s the time to act. In what seems like a move born of desperation, all models of the PlayBook are now going for $299 on RIM’s online store.
Previous PlayBook sales have set the beginning price point at $199 for the 16GB model, but this time you’ll be able to purchase a 64GB PlayBook for the same price as a 16GB model. → Read More
I swear, it never ends — not long after a U.S. court passed down a judgment that saw RIM change the name of their new operating system, the company has once again gotten themselves into a tiff over trademarks. This time, the name in question is “BBM,” RIM’s preferred shorthand for their popular BlackBerry Messenger service.
The lawsuit comes courtesy of BBM Canada, a not-for-profit broadcast and audience measurement organization that’s been in business considerably longer than RIM has. Originally known as the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement, the group was originally founded in 1944 and took on the BBM moniker in 2001 — well before RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger service came to be. → Read More
If you’re a BlackBerry user and you’ve been waiting for a music service that’s just a bit more compelling than BBM Music, then you may be in luck — emphasis on the “may.” Spotify for BlackBerry was officially released today, but you’ll only be able to use it under some specific circumstances.
The newly released app will only work for users with the following BlackBerrys: the Bold 9780, Bold 9700, Curve 9300, Bold 9000, and the Curve 8520. → Read More
To say that RIM has had it rough these past few months is a understatement, but according to a new report from Reuters, it may not have had to go through these trials alone. In a surprising twist, Amazon was reportedly considering a RIM acquisition as recently as this past summer.
According to Reuters, Amazon had tasked an investment bank with exploring the possibility of a RIM buyout, although their sources don’t mention how far both parties were from finalizing a deal. The talks seemed to be largely informal in nature so it may have been nothing more than an open-ended meeting of the minds, but man — what a deal that would’ve been. → Read More
Wow!
They must be breaking mirrors, opening umbrellas and walking under ladders over at RIM because this is starting to get unbelievable. A big rig, carrying around $1.7 million worth of BlackBerry PlayBooks, was stolen in Indiana.
The PlayBook has been a rough product for the Waterloo-based company. While RIM did quite a bit right with the little tab, lack of native email and calendar support made it a tough sell. The price tag didn’t help either, though RIM’s done what it can to squash that issue. In fact, PlayBook sales are actually looking up compared to what they’ve been. → Read More
