I live in Waterloo, a lot of my friends work at RIM. The company employs over 10,000 people. I'd like to see the iPhone fanboys laugh at and mock RIM if they only had a clue about reality.
can you shed some light on 'reality'?
Firstly, I'm Canadian. I know RIM employs a pile of Canadians and I do wish them success. They were the leaders who lead the innovation (imho) of accessing email while on the go. I also believe competition is important.
BUT, a number of things with this company lead me to wonder whether or not it can actually come back.
1. it's leadership - obviously having Bassilie out of the mix is a good thing. His change of direction in wanting to be a hockey owner screwed some key decisions, I believe. ie. the playbook. why it didn't have email on it, which they were KNOWN for, absolutely blows me away. idiotic to be honest.
2. it's products - yes, at once the industry leaders, but they really haven't innovated much lately. The 'Storm' was supposed to be an iphone killer, but it didn't really amount to much. Reportedly had its issues as well. I guess we'll see later this year when their new devices are set for release.
3. the Apple hype right now is just so strong - can any company catch up? 3 million iPads in 4 days....probably more than all other tablet purchases in the last 3 months, combined.
4. Related to the above few points = it's been awhile since RIM showcased anything new. Could this be a case of waiting far too long and now that boat has sailed? I liken it to Corel Corporation. Sure, they got screwed over by MS's dictatorship in having computer manufacturers pre-install Windows and office products, but Corel never even came close to recovering. They're still a software company, but last I heard, they were up for private sale.
Be it marketing, be it hype, be it strong products..whatever...they are selling an insane amount of devices for solid market saturation. The iPhone has been making roads into the corporate world where the BB's held strong.
I was at the Apple store this morning. Ironically, the camera died on my iPhone 4S. Last night, I took 2 mins, made an appt for this morning online, went into the store, 20 mins later, new camera kit replaced on the phone.
That experience alone was fantastic.
But sitting there for 20 minutes, made me realize how strong Apple is right now.
Customers of all ages, shapes and sizes were in that store. I overheard one senior saying he wanted an iPad to facetime with his grandkids and he was buying a macbook to go with it. I saw a colleague of whom I haven't seen in about a half year who was buying an iPad and a new AppleTV. Why? Well he does customer audio / video system installations and everyone, he says, seems to be using iPhones and iPads to control their TV systems and he installs plenty of AppleTVs.
Not only that, but the entire fleet of employees (seriously there had to be 25-40 employees....I just couldn't count them all), were either helping customers or fielding questions for people just walking into the store. It was like a beehive of action. Each employee seemed to have their role defined - be it a greeter, or someone to check a customer into the genius bar, or the genius staff or the employees setting up new macs or iPads for clients. Then there was the retail staff.
It was really was fascinating to watch.
As I left, I had this thought: "Has there ever been a computer/technology company with retail stores selling products like that?"
I couldn't think of any. Heck, I don't know of any regular retail company having that type of shopping experience.
MS is trying. Could RIM? There's too many Android flavours out there so maybe Google?
I doubt it.
As I said, I hope RIM does well. It's good for competition and they employ fellow Canadians. My wife's BB contract is up soon. She might get an iPhone and might want another BB b/c she does prefer the tactile keyboard, but I told here, there aren't many options left with physical keyboards. Add in the voice capabilities of Siri and typing can sometimes be eliminated.
Who knows what she'll do, but I do know that she's had multiple hard crashes with her BB so she's not too happy with it.
Cheers,
Keebler