Top RIM jobs shake-up: Heads roll... but not very far Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis have stepped down as co-CEOs at RIM, but sacrificial lambs have to be sacrificed, not kept knocking around while things continue as usual. Lazaridis hangs on as vice-chairmain, and gets control of a new "Innovation Committee" within the company, while Balsillie will have to content himself with …
Yes yes, QNX this, QNX that. QNX is going to change everything. QNX is making a comeback. Please, spare me. I realize that QNX is a nifty OS but the parallels with OS/2 are uncanny...QNX is an also-ran everywhere I look. Embedded? Sorry, VX/Works rules the day there. I've never worked with an embedded project that wasn't VX/Works. Desktop? Sure the Neutrino demo floppy was cool but...Linux/BSD/Windows/MacOSX...*cough*. As ever with QNX, until they actually DELIVER on some of the gosh-gee-wow promises, I will never believe it.
Actually, the only REAL WORLD thing I've seen running QNX were the truly awful ICON networked computers that were scattered throughout Canada in the late 80's...
RIM buying QNX is as good for it as Nokia buying Trolltech turned out to be (which would have been smart if left as a separate company). Or Morphing Me-goooy (Maemo Moblin meego fiasco). Or HP buying Palm-OS
Some people did use QNX as embedded OS (on things with no display). I'd guess they are all switching to VX/Works and real timer kernel versions of Linux.
Another burning platform?
Visionaries? LOL.
RIM evolved from it's roots as a smart pager, which they then linked to e-mail with a 2-way radio and added talk and added a browser to. Then they rested on their laurels, and a fat cusshy set of cash-cow laurels they were. Now 5 years on from when Apple hit them with a broadside, they still have no adequate response. With their $$, I would have launched a research program 5 years ago, when the Apple came out, to create the next generation product. Instead, they stayed home and rusted to death. They cudda had it all, now Apple has it to lose.
If you're brought up to save the company after the founder and long-term CEOs and board chairmen step down due to taking the company in the wrong direction for five years, the correct acceptance speech begins something like: "And now time for something COMPLETELY different."
To the right of these comments on my screen right now there is an ad for an article entitled "How to tell if your biz will do a Kodak - learn to recognise failure and move on".
RIM are the Kodak of the smartphone world.
Paris icon, because someone made a joke about RIM jobs and, well, you know...
RIM will be acquired by Microsoft for a song. Next will be Nokia's high-end smartphone division.
Kodak's fate was sealed when (almost) everyone shifted from film photography to digital photography, and cameras began to appear on phones. At least its Japanese counterparts could morph into other businesses (Konica Minolta and Fuji Film).
I miss the days of taking pictures on film, then bringing it to a shop for developing the photos. A few days later, I would go collect the photos and the negatives, all placed inside a large oblong yellow Kodak envelope. And the shop would also throw in a free photo album.
Back then, there was also a fear of taking naughty pictures on film, lest the person at the shop sees everything when the photos were developed. Unless, of course, you developed the photos yourself.
Now those days are gone. When technology evolves, some things will inevitably get discarded: floppies, pagers, ISA slots on a motherboard, VHS tapes/recorders etc. It's nostalgic, but that's life.
I think mobile companies forget that most users don't give a flying fuck what OS is running on their phone. Sure, many of us technical people do care, but not the average Joe, Mohammed or Hans. Hans wants nice easy to use user interface, Mohammed wants an Arabic keyboard that actually works while Joe wanted nice games with good controls and a slick graphics. (Not stereo typing, just trying to be global in posting). Most customers want features and a good user interface. That's why Some Android phones sell well, while others don't. They are both running android, but that does not make them equals. You can have the best OS in the world (on technical specs), but all the user cares about is what they see themselves and what apps they can buy. Also, even if an OS is hard to develop software for, developers will still support it if there is a large enough user base.
So one day, all the mobile phone companies are going to wake up and realize that they are all selling uninspired products with nothing but the logo on the case to distinguish them. That's because they are too focused on the platform rather than what the customer actually receives.
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