BlackBerry’s new global creative director, Alicia Keys, tweeting from her device of choice three days ago. Two weeks ago Last year, she said she was an “iPhone junky.” (ht @samradford)
RIM just officially changed its name to BlackBerry, so it’s probably a good time to re-up this bit of comedy gold.
Disappointed that we can no longer use the phrase “RIM job” to describe the company. (Not really.) Read up on the launch over this way.
BlackBerrys were in fact considered in the survey but given very few respondents reported being a BlackBerry user, their numbers were not statistically relevant. Of those considering themselves smartphone owners, only 9 percent reported being BlackBerry users.Tucked away in this Obvious Survey is Obvious post over at POLITICO, which shows President Barack Obama has a commanding 49-31 percent lead over Mitt Romney among iPhone/Android users, is one of the saddest statistics about Research in Motion we’ve ever come across (via hypervocal)
In the U.S. we were very, very successful coming from the core enterprise business, and in the public opinion this is still where we’re skewed to. We need to be more marketing-driven. We need to be more consumer-oriented because this is where a lot of our growth is coming from. That is essential in the U.S.Research in Motion’s new CEO, Thorsten Heins • Discussing the difficult issues the company faces as it tries to compete with Apple and Google in a field that they popularized with the BlackBerry: Smartphones. Heins, the former Chief Operating Officer, replaced the company’s two co-CEOs, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, who stepped down over the weekend. It has not exactly been the best year for RIM — to call the company’s tablet, the PlayBook, a flop would be putting it lightly, as its failure cost the company nearly half a billion dollars last year. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg in terms of their problems. source (via • follow)
Let’s face it. At this point, the only time “RIM” and “good news” will show up in the same sentence is when they’re planning on selling themselves to another company that won’t screw it up.
» Why is the PlayBook flopping? If you asked RIM, you’d get an answer that sounds pretty jargon-y: “Recent shifts in the competitive dynamics of the tablet market and a delay in the release of the PlayBook OS 2.0 software.” Here’s the English version of that answer: “The iPad, the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire.” But that’s just us talking. Meanwhile, RIM has been trimming the price of the PlayBook from an absurd $500 to as low as $199 — in part to clear inventory for the next version of the device, though we’re guessing the fact that other seven-inch tablets are selling for roughly that price doesn’t help.
Heavily-discounted BlackBerry Playbook disappears from online listings, orders cancelled: Sounds like RIM didn’t learn a lesson from the whole HP Touchpad debacle.
Today in side effects that say more about the devices than the outage itself. Gives new meaning to the phrase “Research in Motion.” (via Percolate)
Hey RIM, didya forget about how stupid AT&T is? The BlackBerry Playbook’s utterly bizarre requirement that forces you to tether your phone to your tablet to check your e-mail is bad enough, but there’s an even worse problem for the company, and it’s one that most iPhone customers know all too well about. See, AT&T isn’t all that hot about the concept of tethering devices unless they can make money off of it. So … guess what AT&T isn’t allowing on the BlackBerry Playbook right now? That’s right. Tethering. So, if you’re an AT&T customer, you can’t check your e-mail on your shiny new tablet. And they may charge $45 a month for the privilege. In other news, launch day sales for the Playbook were a relatively robust 45,000. source
I can’t add much to what’s already been (and will be) ...
One of the perks of being an early employee...
Over the last 90 days, the Digg...
#FMMDI (at 30 Rockefeller Plaza)
Thanks. I guess my thoughts are as follows:
1. I think...
» Getting a tad too defensive: One of Research in Motion’s main men, co-CEO Jim Balsillie, used this sentence of utter nonsense in defending his company’s inexplicable decision to avoid allowing e-mail over wi-fi on the Playbook: “I don’t think people realize the threat matrix to your own personal information and your PCs and a lot of different smartphone architectures is a lot greater than people realize.” What? “Threat matrix”? Really? That’s BS.
» Wait wait, how sad is this? Kodak, one of the great companies of the 20th century — and probably the one most deserving of a Paul Simon tune — has been relegated to patent troll status. Kodak claims that they hold the patent to an image-preview feature commonly used in cameraphones. The company has lost half of its market value in the past year.
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