[rdkempt]

RIM And Apple: Mobile Agony And Ecstasy - Global-cio - Executive insights/interviews - Informationweek

RIM's enterprise IT faithful writhe in pain, while Apple's worshippers hold vigil to buy the iPhone 4S. Did RIM's outage explanation Thursday help at all?

By Laurianne McLaughlin InformationWeek
October 14, 2011 12:32 PM


I saw this when I fired up Twitter this morning:

" BREAKING: RIM employees calling in sick in order to buy iPhone 4S for themselves."

And this: "Dear #RIM, makers of my beloved #BlackBerry: Thank-you for honouring the death of Steve Jobs with 3 days of silence this week."

Finally, this:

"Dear Blackberry do you know what the #iPhone said to the #Blackberry? ..#iWork"

Oh, the gallows humor is getting pretty grim for RIM.

RIM's co-CEOs tried to explain this week's prolonged outage Thursday, but as InformationWeek's Jonathan Feldman explains, the company failed to answer some key questions that CIOs now have about the health of RIM's network.

Consider this reader comment on Feldman's story: "RIM's architecture is so old: three data centers (two of them next to each other) for 60-70 million users. This generates such a high risk for the most mundane failure, such as this week's Cisco switch failover. RIM should have built multiple data centers in many countries years ago. In their poor judgment they didn't see the benefits of reduced risk as opposed to increase in operational cost. With the swoosh sound of departing customers, they must be realizing the stupidity of that short-sightedness. Only other sinister explanation for keeping data centers in Canada and the UK could be to keep their encryption software away from the reaches of regulators in countries like UAE, India, etc.

Time to move on, BB was a good solution 10 years ago. Not anymore. By the way, Apple may risk a similar fate if they pump iCloud too much while trying to cram everything in their North Carolina data center."

What do you think: Is RIM's once-prized reliability a thing of the past? Is its network done scaling? And if it is, what else does the company have to offer enterprise IT? See what Feldman and other IT pros say, then join the conversation by adding your take.

Meanwhile, the Apple iPhone faithful lined up in the dark, as has become tradition, to get their mitts on the first iPhone 4S units at retail stores Friday morning, some offering tributes or memorials to Steve Jobs. Analysts predict this will be the record-setter iPhone rollout for sales, and early indications bear that out, as Eric Zeman reported Thursday.

Journalist Harry McCracken of Technologizer, waiting in line at San Francisco's Stonestown Galleria Mall, told me Friday morning via Twitter that he had not met any disgruntled BlackBerry owners in line, just a lot of college students. That's not surprising, but disgruntled BlackBerry users were certainly lining up in corporate hallways to gripe this week.

It hasn't been all ecstasy for Apple this week, of course, as the reader comments happening on our coverage of the disastrous iOS 5 update shows.

These are the two faces of mobile today: People love smartphones enough that they will wait in the dark, in the rain even, to get the newest Apple creation. People need smartphones enough that even a short service outage is deemed unacceptable, and an outage this long could deal RIM a knockout punch.

People are passionate enough about phones to become an always-on, always-honest, worldwide network of mobile analysts on Twitter.

By the way, what about that other little phone player, Google? In announcing its record-setting quarterly revenue Thursday, Google disclosed that 555,000 Android devices are now being activated daily.

That's iLluminating news for RIM and Apple, isn't it?

Laurianne McLaughlin is editor-in-chief for InformationWeek.com. Follow her on Twitter at @lmclaughlin.

[Rootbrian]

I have a feeling this thread is going to spark a flame war. For what ever reason, it's just stupid. Some of those tweets, especially the employees running for the 4S, is bullcrap. I get the humor. But rim isn't going out of business or dying.

Sent from my BlackBerry Bold 9700 using Tapatalk @ wapforums.crackberry.com

[tchocky77]

@Rootbrian. What makes you so confident?

Not having a go. Honestly curious. They burned through most of their cash last quarter AFTER laying off 10% of their workers. If they're selling anything, it's playbooks so sharply discounted they can't be very profitable and generations-old phones in the third world on razor-thin margins. A four day outage. New iPhone available on the top three American networks. It's given Sprint their best day EVER.

I think the writing's on the wall.

[Chrisy]

Thanks for the article. Interesting read.

[SnoozerBold]

The writing has 'been on the wall' for years now according to many people who like to come here and gloat. I suspect they'll continue to say so for years to come. Its strange to see so many people hoping constantly for years for a company to fail because they prefer another smart phone.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Pete6#WP]

Even if RIM "fails" and gets bought out, the BlackBerry phone will not die. There are 60 million BlackBerry customers out there and a HUGE amount of brand loyalty.REAL

The name BlackBerry evokes thoughts of extreme reliability and usability. If you just want an easy to use phone with a REAL keyboard that slips into your pants pocket and you are not too bothered by having lots of games on your phone then why would you buy anything BUT a BlackBerry?

[Dapper37]

People please, the people that truly enjoy their RIM products please stop feeding, listening or responding to this rubbish. It so easy to be anti RIM right now, some good reasons mostly fiction. The new product is the just the start of the turn around. The BB7 devices are selling out around the world! Personally I've seen so meny BB7 devices here in Thailand, out in the wild i'm blown away. Their a hit. The money, desire, talent, quality and the rest is all their, in place. Turns in business do not happen over night. Your competitors are bound to take the spotlight during the process. If it weren't for the American media (global media) pounding the table every 15 min about how wonderfull apple products are things would seem not so intense. They understand whats at stake and will stop at nothing until their US based champion is the only player left. Just relax, RIM will be fine. People that get concerned here are similar to the people that watch their stocks go up in the good times only to dump them at the bottom, then watch them go up again soon their after. To the fanbois that will respond with their tierd old lines. Go F yourself!

[rdkempt]

The BB7 devices are selling out around the world!

The difference in sales of the devices is the key though. iPhone 4S pre-order numbers were higher than all BBOS 7 phone sales combined to date... which is incredible. On a similar note, the iPad sold more units on it's first day than the Playbook has in 6 months, and that's without needing to slash prices to become the "oh you can't afford a good tablet but there's this cheap small one" like RIM is now doing.

Numbers today that would be great for RIM would be devastating and unacceptable to Apple.

Will RIM itself out of the crapper? I certainly hope so, I was a BB user for 7 years and have nothing but love for the company. I'm really interested to see how they're going to do it though, odds are certainly against them - they've failed to inspire good app developers, released a dead gap OS admitting the handsets the OS was shipped on will be useless when the QNX based OS gets released (no upgrade path... even a 2 year old iPhone 3GS can upgrade to IOS 5... RIM released a phone which in 6 months won't be able to get the latest OS?). Their PR is the lowest I've ever seen and they are mocked in the media. I don't think they'll ever be bought because the CEOs are too ignorant and arrogant, but I hope to see them turn things around (I expect it to be 2+ years out before I would reconsider them, but would love to see the day).

[timmsy]

no one cares as its all about 2012 and the QNX Blackberry "Super Smartphones" :P

[Chrisy]

People please, the people that truly enjoy their RIM products please stop feeding, listening or responding to this rubbish. It so easy to be anti RIM right now, some good reasons mostly fiction. The new product is the just the start of the turn around. The BB7 devices are selling out around the world! Personally I've seen so meny BB7 devices here in Thailand, out in the wild i'm blown away. Their a hit. The money, desire, talent, quality and the rest is all their, in place. Turns in business do not happen over night. Your competitors are bound to take the spotlight during the process. If it weren't for the American media (global media) pounding the table every 15 min about how wonderfull apple products are things would seem not so intense. They understand whats at stake and will stop at nothing until their US based champion is the only player left. Just relax, RIM will be fine. People that get concerned here are similar to the people that watch their stocks go up in the good times only to dump them at the bottom, then watch them go up again soon their after. To the fanbois that will respond with their tierd old lines. Go F yourself!

Mature. Just get used to the fact that on CrackBerry we like to discuss different platforms, including BlackBerry. It's a good way to learn. I love CrackBerry to read about all the smartphone platforms. It's why this forum is so great.

Don't take it so personally. No one is attacking your manhood. The article was interesting. It's ok to discuss things, news and rumors good and bad.

[Dapper37]

The difference in sales of the devices is the key though. iPhone 4S pre-order numbers were higher than all BBOS 7 phone sales combined to date... which is incredible. On a similar note, the iPad sold more units on it's first day than the Playbook has in 6 months, and that's without needing to slash prices to become the "oh you can't afford a good tablet but there's this cheap small one" like RIM is now doing.

Numbers today that would be great for RIM would be devastating and unacceptable to Apple.

Will RIM itself out of the crapper? I certainly hope so, I was a BB user for 7 years and have nothing but love for the company. I'm really interested to see how they're going to do it though, odds are certainly against them - they've failed to inspire good app developers, released a dead gap OS admitting the handsets the OS was shipped on will be useless when the QNX based OS gets released (no upgrade path... even a 2 year old iPhone 3GS can upgrade to IOS 5... RIM released a phone which in 6 months won't be able to get the latest OS?). Their PR is the lowest I've ever seen and they are mocked in the media. I don't think they'll ever be bought because the CEOs are too ignorant and arrogant, but I hope to see them turn things around (I expect it to be 2+ years out before I would reconsider them, but would love to see the day).

Right, i heard all that before. What is it that you would have done?
After you rip into your flame, look back at it and ask yourself if any company in business today would actually do that. I don't think so.

[tchocky77]

Do you mean would any company successfully save itself? I can't tell what your question is?

[rdkempt]

Right, i heard all that before. What is it that you would have done?
After you rip into your flame, look back at it and ask yourself if any company in business today would actually do that. I don't think so.

I would have continued developing the phones and stayed a competitor in the mobile market while it was exploding and booming - they laid back for a few years doing nothing and now they need to play catch up.