RIM

Playbook: Maybe just right on target.

April 15, 2011
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There have been a rush of negative reviews for RIM’s Playbook over the last few days.  It’s been called half-baked, rushed to market, unfinished, and worse.  I haven’t seen it yet, but in my opinion, Playbook might be just right. What? Yup.  You heard me. No product team has ever produced a fully realized product [...]

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Don’t be afraid to kill old business lines.

December 13, 2010
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Successfully transitioning from a current product to a next generation, without damaging the business today, is one of the toughest balancing acts in business.  That’s the challenge that the darling of the Canadian mobile market, RIM, faces today. Friday afternoon a customer casually asked me what I thought of RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis’ session at [...]

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RIM scorched earth tactics send wrong message to developers.

December 2, 2010
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If you’re in the platform business, as RIM is, you need to be willing to tolerate a certain amount of competition for the core applications on the platform. It just goes with the territory.  That’s why I think that RIM are getting bad advice with respect to alleged patent infringer Kik Interactive. If you’re not [...]

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Lies, damn lies, and statistics

December 1, 2010
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Like a lot of mobile software developers, we track which handsets and operating systems are most popular. It’s critical to our business to understand which platforms have market share, are in ascendancy, decline and so on.  That’s the reason I read Royal Pingdom’s study of mobile OS usage so carefully this morning.  Region by region, [...]

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RIM’s secret weapon.

September 9, 2010

The US analyst community has been holding a wake for RIM in the last few days.  Henry Blodget has been beating the drum for some time, and now he’s been joined by Colin Gillis of BCG, Adnaan Ahmad of Berenberg, and Pierre Ferragu of Bernstein.  It’s a pile-on that has driven the stock price down [...]

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Which phone manufacturer will team up with Sony or Nintendo?

August 17, 2010

Image via Wikipedia Microsoft has finally announced the Xbox Live titles that will be available on Windows Phone 7, and according long time Microsoft watcher Mary-Jo Foley, the company has said that games will be front and center for the Windows 7 platform.  Marrying the successful XBOX franchise to Windows Phone is clearly an attempt [...]

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RIM bought QNX because of Apple.

April 9, 2010

News is out this morning that Harman International has agreed to sell its QNX Software Systems division to Research In Motion.  TechCrunch reports that this might mean tighter integration with automobiles, since Harman acquired QNX in order to provide software to its automotive customer base.  RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis himself hypes up the automotive possibilities [...]

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Why iPhone is destined to dominate Android and BlackBerry in the market

January 24, 2010

One of the most common debates among smart phone cognoscenti is which platform will prevail — BlackBerry, Symbian, iPhone, Microsoft, or the latest entrant Android? Common thought is that the platform with the most developers will win, and currently that’s iPhone.  Many folks, however, having drunk the “open” kool-aid, believe that ultimately Android must win. [...]

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Nokia buy Palm? Not so fast…

November 17, 2009

Last week rumours circulated (again) that Nokia might acquire Palm.  Palm shares rallied, but seem to have settled back down this week. The “deal”, after all, is a Wall Street wet dream, and not much more.  It’s true that Nokia’s stock price is suffering and that Nokia’s share is slipping in the smart phone market. [...]

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Does Blackberry need a PR rethink?

October 17, 2009

Gizmodo’s Brian Lam is ticked off.  The Blackberry PR team didn’t provide him with a review unit of the new Storm 2 before launch, and consequently he didn’t write a review. Only the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal got the units, apparently. RIM has consistently ignored bloggers for a very long time, [...]

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