“The past few years have been pretty rough for Research in Motion and 2011 was worse still. Now, after several missteps and bad calls, the company is apparently considering a move to calm investors and show that it is attempting to change the corporate environment that has crippled its ability to compete,” Amanda Alix writes for The Motley Fool. “Strong rumors abound that have co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie stepping down as board co-Chairs, setting the stage for the appointment of Barbara Stymiest, a board member of five years. Are things really changing, or is the company just primping for the next suitor?”
“For years, Lazaridis and Balsillie have run the enterprise almost as an afterthought. Once the leader in the smart phone market, it now commands only 10%. This has come about purely because the two CEOs have consistently refused to keep up with the times, and the market,” Alix writes. “Why would those who know better run a company into the ground? In order to make itself an attractive acquisition, that’s why.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: DCW, precisely.
Any company that would make and inflict upon people such absolutely horrid products as the BlackBerry Storm or the PlayBook — especially while claiming that “amateur hour is over” — deserves its fate.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
There are two errors in this statement by Ms. Alix. First, their failure to compete with Apple is not due ‘purely’ because they failed (apparently intentionally) to keep up with the times. They actually failed for other reasons: (1) RIM, like the rest of the would-be iPhone competitors, are not Apple, and (2) RIM failed to turn on the iPhone copying machines like Samsung, HTC, and the rest.
The second error is the implication that any leader with a major stake in a company would choose to run a company into the ground in order to court an acquisition by another company. “Let’s just slide more deeply into the crapper a little bit more and someone will scoop us out…” I don’t think so. RIM was worth a whole lot more to these guys when the company was healthy.
The real answer is a lack of vision and leadership by these gentlemen. They failed because they were not good enough. It is that simple.
Rescue plan for RIM: Replace Lazaridis and Balsillie by 4 Co-CEOS. After all 4 heads think better than 2.
Where’s StormTard when you need him?
When you’re circling the rim of the toilet, do you wait for the toilet plunger to push you further down the drain or do you do something radical to pull yourself out of a death spiral by introducing a line of products that captivates the public?
In Steve Jobs’s case, his mission in 1997 was clear. Cut the bloated product line and focus on one game changing product that you can sell to your loyal customer base and attract new users to your cause. The iMac was just such a machine and it allowed Apple to distinguish itself from the rest of the beige box manufacturers.
RIM needs a hit product and they haven’t got much time in which to do it. SJ could make decisions on the fly but RIM seems to be mired in a bureaucratic quagmire. It doesn’t know what it wants to be. A manufacturer of phones with keyboards or go completely touchscreen. But when you’re weighed down by a customer base that expects a keyboard, you’re caught between a rock and a hard place.
There single problem as underestimating the iPhone. They laughed it off for the first year. Then tried to introduce a touchscreen that was supposedly better. Which was horrible. Then the Android copy machine came along that simply copied Apple which gave people an alternative to iPhone. The main thing I believe they did was not eat humble pie in the face of a real competitor. Statements like Amateur hour is over are infuriating to the consumer when clearly the product is inferior.
Perhaps ballsack should have focused more on his business vs hockey teams. Which perhaps reveals these guys were right place right time versus actual tech visionaries as they believe they are.
Those who laughed the loudest at the iPhone, Microsoft, RIM and Nokia, were hurt the most in the cell phone market place.
RIM is not alone. Microsoft/Nokia is circling the big white telephone too.
IT departments still hanging on to XP and BES tend to be more than ossified, and they may be the only remnants of the soon to be historical RIM available to any anthropologist who wants to bother.
The sheer hubris of “Amateur hour is over” earns every well deserved cruel chuckle coming their way. He who laughs loudest is the most clueless at emerging disruptive technology. Clearly that laughter is of the nervous variety.
“Like manure on a horse farm”: A stroll down memory lane.
http://allthingsd.com/20110512/actually-amateur-hour-seems-far-from-over-rim/
They were right. Amateur hour is over.
They were just introducing the “make fun of the mentally challenged” part of the show.
Stymie
transitive verb
: to present an obstacle to : stand in the way of
And they want to put in someone who is the “Stymiest”? 😉
A name’s just a name. In all likelihood, she got it from her father, who got it from his father, who …
When she screws up, then with name jokes.
Who knows, she may pull off a miracle.
All of you undervalue RIMM by a lot. It’s patents alone are worth $12-14 per share, just under it’s current price of $15. Cash is probably another $2-3 per share. Property and equipment around $3-5 per share. Completely discounting future sales (and who wouldn’t) the value of RIMM is around $19. It’s almost worth buy if it is broken up. And given that the Canadian government may protect this asset, it could be worth more.
You all deride BES, yet the iPhone runs on it along with several other phones. Along with Exchange server, they rule communications in the Enterprise market, and until the day when and/or if Apple wants to provide enterprise solutions (and iCloud is not an Enterprise solution, unless you give control to IT), BES will have a very high value. And believe it or not, in the Enterprise market, Blackberry’s email is considered quite elegant (and please don’t provide me special pleading using confirmation bias, it’s not going to mean anything). I’m not talking about the Blackberry phone itself, just how the email system itself runs, which is still easier than the iPhone.
Anyways, Blackberry is a perfect example of a company that had superior software, first to the market leadership, and an almost rock star status in the business world. Up until the iPhone was launched, business people compared their Blackberry’s like they compared their summer homes and Ferraris.
But Balsillie became obsessed with buying an NHL team (that’s not going to happen now), which probably took his eye off the ball…errrrrr puck. On the day the iPhone was launched he should have sat down with his team and said, “this thing will kill us, let’s deal with it now.” He should have thrown away the prior thinking, and started afresh knowing he had leadership with the BES. But RIMM thought that the software mattered. And it does, but not if it never changes to new realities, and if your hardware is stuck in the 90’s.
Well, they are attempting…., but with the situation they put themselves in, it would be a miracle to see the situation resolve for them.