The Media's Insatiable Hunger for RIM's Downfall

or:
Why Everyone's Full of Shit and Should Just Shut Up Already About the Blackberry Failing

I find it ridiculous and incredibly annoying that there is a non-stop stream of articles being published by many top news sources (if you can believe that any truly exist anymore) about the death of Blackberry. I believe they've been releasing these for years now, or at least since I worked at RIM back in 2005. I remember thinking it was so weird to read the articles while working on the inside as they didn't seem to correlate with anything that was going on or actually happening within the company, it was like the authors were just making stuff up, or had a strong hate on for RIM, especially the Canadian press, who'd you'd think would support the country's giant!

What's the newest hubbub about? The United Arab Emirates doesn't think they are secure enough and are a security threat after failing to install shitty spy code that failed miserably? Boohoo, a 3rd world country with just under 7 million people, most of who make $1.20 an hour doesn't want Blackberry anymore, oh the lost business, oh the humanity! Sure Abu Dhabi has almost a million people and is really expensive, but still, what kind of business that relies on Blackberry is going to stand for the overpriced rent and then the loss of the use of their primary mobile communications tool (The one that the rest of the company globally will still be using)? I don't know if the UAE is threatening to just get rid of all Blackberries, or just what is used in the government, which would then be an inconsequential amount, but it's still overblown. Isn't that the country where women who get raped then get sent to jail because of it?

Anyways, enough ranting about the UAE, it's not going to be that significant a loss with all of the current expansion.

Here is what people don't seem to get:
Businesses already use Blackberry, and if you've ever worked in a big corporation, god help us if they decide to change a primary piece of technology that

1. Everyone relies on
2. Everyone already knows how to use

Many people will bitch and moan if they get their Blackberries taken away for even a day during a potential transition, despite how cool the iPhone looks. Getting a change that big in is huge and takes a long time and a lot of money to do, more so than makes it worth it. Perhaps the next wave of huge companies are starting today and using iPhones, but it's a little too hard to tell this early and will they outnumber the ones who still exist?

How many big companies do you know of that are still using IE6 for christ's sake? If they can't upgrade something that simple and vulnerable, how can they hope to get around to changing something a 1000 times more complex?

I'm pretty sure Blackberries are much cheaper in terms of data transfer due to the encryption you get, and not to mention that Blackberry is the most secure way to go, and there are people who are fanatical about having massive security in large corporations. Triple BES, word.

I can't speak for all corporations, but I'm sure many of them have most of the cool features people like locked out anyways. The policies are just too strong to ignore with Blackberry, do those exist within consumer oriented smartphones? Can you nuke your iPhone with one command from IT no matter where they are in the world?

The majority of people at huge companies are just too tech illiterate to know how to use new features of smart phones anyways (let alone their basic personal cell phones), even the training just on how to use the iphone would be monumental, not to mention the complaints of typing woes on a touchscreen.

THE PROSUMER DEVICES AREN'T MADE FOR BIG BUSINESS.
Period.

Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman.

Sure you COULD use them, and smaller companies surely do, but you are going to have to pry the BB's out of the masses' cold dead fingers before we start seeing iPhones inside huge organizations. There is no cost justification to make the switch, and everyone is already established.

RIM may very well end up sucking at the consumer/prosumer market, but I don't think they are ever going to lose businesses in the short term, they just have way better technology and solutions to offer. They surely aren't going to go under. Journalists don't get this because they don't generally live in the environments where Blackberries thrive. They focus on the cool, on the masses, and on the hype, most of which is their own.

New York Times recently writes that RIM may be dying because 80% of the Fortune 100 is testing and deploying iPhones. What does that even mean? It probably means they are testing them because someone thought they were cool and wants to see if it's viable, but it doesn't mean they've switched or are going to. More than likely some guy high up in IT wanted a cool toy and Apple said here's a bunch for free, please test them (...so we can come up with good stats)!

Even if 80% of the Fortune 100 switches, there are more than 100 companies out there, and some have lots of employees! And having less apps? What does that have to do with anything related to a business using a Blackberry? if they need something specific they can buy or write it, 90% of the apps out there would be useless or disabled on the devices anyway! Talk about an e-peen competition when it doesn't even matter.

It just seems that there are some fundamental things that the Blackberry has going for it that the consumer/prosumer would never think about or care about, meaning they get overlooked by many people and writers, and those little things are really the deal breakers in large companies.

I want RIM to succeed, I want them to continue to bring in revenue for Canada, and I also want to see Apple crushed. I'd love to see Google do some nifty stuff too as I like them, but what they stand for doesn't exactly jive with big companies who are overly secretive to the point where they are too afraid to even use cloud services for non-confidential data.

Argue on the important points and I'll listen, but argue on the features of apples in a market that only cares about oranges is a fools game.

Ok, so lets assume for a second that everything I've spewed so far is mostly just unresearched bullshit and that Google and iPhone are both viable and have a similar or as good feature set that companies base their decisions on.

It still comes down to this: what do these other offerings provide that justifies the massive cost and disruption of re-evaluating, tearing out, integrating, training, and supporting these new phones? Make no mistake that this will be a humongous cost with lots of hurdles to jump through with unexpected difficulties. Are they going to win on cost advantage and what's the time frame for a return on investment? These new phones are not tried, tested and true, they aren't as trust worthy as the RIM brand, whether or not they are technically superior. I just can't imagine anyone in the corporate world being able to sell the benefits of this cost. It may seem small or stupid just to change over some phones, but nothing is small when it comes to big corp, everything takes months and years and way too many PMs. What about the contracts and licenses already paid for? Vendor relations?

So...am I completely full of shit too? Probably, but from my experiences it just doesn't seem to add up. Most of us reading this live in a bubble. We all have our own lens of perception, but it really comes down to money and risk, and in the backwards mixed up world of big corporations, that's all that truly seems to matter.

How Google Could Lose to Bing While Doing Everything Right!

I love Google,
I think their products are great, and I practically live off! Although some are just not right for me, I always have Gmail, Gcal, Greader, Gtalk and often Gdocs opened in FireFox. I use Google as my search engine, and I'm excited about getting into betas for new hot Google products that might be awesome.

I think about those around me, my friends, colleagues, and peers. Those who aren't too much younger would probably have had similar experiences, growing up under Microsoft's looming shadow, being afraid that if you misspoke of Bill Gates, a satellite would fire a laser down from the heavens and incinerate you; quietly dreaming of revolution. Now some of those people went off to live in Linux world, strongly heralding open source and free. They were the hackers and tinkerers, they found a new free world, not perfect, but theirs to construct. Then there were those who took the plunge into the overpriced and trendy MacWorld. They didn't generally play games so it wasn't a huge hurdle.

I always looked for reasonable alternatives that met my needs, but I couldn't go Linux, no matter how much I wanted to, and I wouldn't dare step into the hypocrisy of Apple. It doesn't matter how flashy your commercial is, being able to rip, burn and word process is still fucking lame no matter how you sex it up. I always had this notion of hating Microsoft (not only just because, but as they did cause a lot of grief with their products), and I knew a LOT of other people did, so I begrudgingly used their products and complained. There were no viable alternatives for me being a gamer and mass downloader. My first big taste of freedom was when FireFox was released and I made the switch. I became such a huge advocate of it (and to an extent I still am) and would urge others to switch out of crappy IE land. When I started going Google, I found it was great; a new saviour, huge and *Not Evil*. I was able to Rebel against the Microsoft and avoid using their products! I could use Firefox, I could use Gdocs(although Docs still has a few shortcomings), I could escape hotmail, msn messenger; I could start to live in the browser...a non Microsoft browser!

I don't really hate Microsoft anymore, I understand their business a lot better, their ISV system is brilliant, I love the Xbox and now they are starting to become something of an underdog, if you can believe that. There is a lot of talk of the encroaching market cap of Apple compared to Microsoft, there is increasing talk of Apple becoming the biggest, best, and most awesome company out there, and I hate it, I hate Apple with a passion brighter than a thousand suns. I hate what they do, what they stand for, how they act, and how they make their fans react. I'm actually more inclined to root for Microsoft just to make them come back and crush Apple, although I know it's not going to happen any time soon, I think it'll probably just get worse before it gets better.

I know in reality that Apple can never overtake Microsoft the way people think (or wish) they can. They absolutely need Microsoft; Apple is the more expensive and cool option, they aren't meant for everybody, and not everyone can afford it. There has to be a cheaper and more common option for them to price and position against. I'm also pretty sure the multi-billion dollar hardware market will want to fuck Apple's shit up for ruining their party.

Anyways, we all have our allegiances to one OS or another, to open source, sexy vs utility, etc. Think of how we grew up and got where we are today, how many of us broke out of the Microsoft shadow, we rebelled and found something cooler, something better, something more functional or elitest. It was generally "try to escape the giant and laugh as they die for being so shitty and aggravating and for ruining our lives".

A lot of us found Google and loved it, we knew what kind of company they are, their philosophies, their better products and we are happy with where we settled. But what about the children?

Funny enough type the phrase "won't somebody" into Google and look at the first auto-complete result!

I find it interesting to think we grew up as the children of the big, bad, unstoppable Microsoft, and we rebelled, maybe because we hated them, maybe because it was the cool thing to do, maybe because we wanted to be more unique, maybe we wanted to find a real contender with a better product, or maybe we just wanted to rebel (we were probably teens at the time if you are my age).

When children born now or several years ago grow up, what will they do? Will they see Google as the new Microsoft? Will they rebel to other offerings not as big? Maybe they'll go to Bing, "this 'Microsoft' company who's fighting to take it to Apple", seemingly a good cause, the underdog.

Even if Google appears to live the *Don't be Evil* mantra, much unlike Microsoft, kids and teens will rebel, they'll want to use something other than their parent's browsers, or what everyone else is doing. They won't realize we already went through that fight and picked the "good guys", they won't know the history, they'll just see Google is everywhere, Google is great, Mom, Dad, Teacher, they all love Google. "I think Google is over rated and stupid, lets find the new, true, winner! The real contender!" By this time, there will be enough speculation about what Google is secretly doing, that they really are *evil*, that they are fucking with counties (China, etc.) and trying to make too much information public. They'll be enough blog fodder out there to feed any paranoid conspiracy seeking kid's dreams. They might not know better, but they'll think they do (how many of you thought you were so much smarter at that age?) and they'll base their choices off of their perceptions.

Google will turn around one day and say What the Fuck?! Where did all of our traffic go and why is Bing growing? Who the hell likes or uses Microsoft? How can we possibly be facing the same problems they had? We all grew up under that shadow fighting to do it "right" from the start, to make up for their mistakes! We grew a monopoly-like giant, but with competitors, so it's ok. They'll be confused.

I wonder if this will happen. Does history repeat itself? Are teens always going to be "teens"? or will kids live in tubes sharing every moment of their physical activity on Google Physiology and loving it? Will they believe the stories told by their parents about Microsoft's tyranny?

It will be intriguing to find out, to see if the mighty can fall for no reason apart from a generation that is no more rebellious than the last, but much more empowered.