Blackberry's fall
 

I thought this was an interesting piece about Research in Motion (RIM/maker of Blackberries) and how it went from the top of the cell phone world to its current predicament. The article itself is quite long and probably won't be everyone's cup of tea but I recommend reading it if you're at all interested in business.

Mods: Feel free to move to the Media Center if you wish but I figured it was interesting enough to put out here where more than five people might actually see it.

Short excerpt:

Read the story here.

That and the fact that Jim Balsillie was more interested in getting an NHL in Hamilton, ONT than growing his company.

Interesting. Even though the company I work for is doing well, stories like this bring realization that nothing good lasts forever.

It's funny. Just a year ago my kids and I had cheap little phones from Metro PCS. I finally upgraded to a smart phone, then did the same with my kids. Our cheap little low end phones worked just like the Blackberry.

Before the iPhones and Android phones took over the market, Blackberry was the best thing going. Several years ago we were using smart phones, and they were simply not very good.

We made Blackberry phones the standard for all smart phones in my company, and it solved a bunch of problems we were having with reliability. Then a few years later we changed the standard to iPhones. I felt pretty good about both decisions. Blackberries were great in their day, but that day is gone.

I don't see how RIM can survive.

Berry was the first smart phone I had years ago. It was great.
Then they just...stopped.

Arrogant jackasses.

A lot of the reason this was so interesting to me. A blackberry was my first one as well. I still have one through work. It feels even less technologically advanced than my old one from several years ago.

Self-inflicted suicide

They had the market by the balls but it's like they fired their r&d team...the op makes sense. Hubris.

They're not. I'm not sure when the last quarter was that they turned a profit. They're just eating equity until the inevitable end.

I really liked BB. They just didn't keep pace.

I actually liked a couple of their ideas they didn't do (without knowing the full details of course).

The China deal and blackberry messenger providing seem like particularly egregious missed opportunities.

You could write the story of BB's fail in one sentence.

"Things were great, we were kicking ass until Google and Apple chose to enter the market."

A company like RIM needed to be bought out by Google, who bought a struggling motorola in 2012. The only company that impresses me is Samsung, but they run on the android

That seems about right...android is so customer friendly.