RIM has been reportedly in talks with Amazon, Nokia and even Microsoft to sell the company. I can’t say I didn’t see this coming. In fact for a while now I think the executives at RIM have been the only ones who haven’t seen this coming. RIM really has no one to blame but themselves.
There have been warnings for years that they need to become competitive first with the iPhone, and later with Android. But RIM never took them seriously enough. Sure, they’ve tried to “dip their toes” in the market with their first touchscreen phone, the Storm, that was also using their old Blackberry OS, but as expected it turned out a complete failure that showed how unprepared the company is to switch to touchscreen phones.
But even then RIM didn’t see it as much of a sign that they need to double down on touchscreen phones and become competitive as soon as possible. The reason for that is because their financial numbers still looked great. That’s because the iPhone and Android were still in the early days to impact them. Plus, RIM has been mostly about the enterprise market. Their sales also kept climbing internationally, as a result of brand inertia globally that has been built over the years. Who hasn’t heard about a “Blackerry”?
For these reasons, RIM kept ignoring the elephant in the room, which was the fact that their phones were not competitive in any way, shape or form with the iPhone or new Android phones. They didn’t realize that even if their financials were looking good at the time, it could pose a serious threat to them later on, so instead of focusing on creating a new modern operating system and building flawless touchscreen phones, they kept going on their business with the usual iterations of Blackberry smartphones.
RIM should’ve also realized that they are in danger, when Nokia started falling fast because of iPhone/Android. Just like RIM, Nokia used to be a powerful global leader in phones. But their numbers started declining quickly. RIM should’ve realized then that it’s only a matter of time before it affects them, too. The only reason they weren’t affected in the same time is because their market was mostly the enterprise customers. And we all know that the enterprise customers are slower to adapt to new market trends. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to happen.
So bottomline is RIM had plenty of opportunities to change their ways, adapt and become competitive in the new touchscreen smartphone world. But they didn’t take advantage of any of them, until they actually saw their financials are going down. But by then it was already too late. Because of this they will only be able to release a “modern” smartphone with BB10 at the end of 2012! That’s ridiculous. They might as well give up, which is probably why they are discussing being acquired by Amazon, Nokia or Microsoft.