It is a sad day for many employees of RIM. During the company’s disastrous first quarter results, they learned some workers would be laid off. But it’s not the workers that are responsible for this mess.
[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]I first came out against RIM back in February when the company was the darling of the media and the PlayBook was the device expected to kill the iPad. At that time, I wrote a story called “RIM needs to shut up and ship,” chastising the company for announcing three generations of PlayBooks before they even shipped one.
This was a sure sign to me that RIM had fallen far behind Apple and was doing what it could to cope.
RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie said, “I think the PlayBook redefines what a tablet should do.”
Ultimately, RIM released a device that doesn’t even have email or calendaring. This from the company that made its mark in the mobile arena based on secure email. What’s worse is the response that RIM’s CEO had to the lack of basic features.
Jim Balsillie said that people are “overplaying one aspect that really isn’t a core element that we’ve seen from our enterprise customers or webmail people.”
Email is a core element for everyone these days, let alone the professionals that RIM is targeting with the PlayBook. With the denials from Balsillie and the interview meltdowns of co-CEO Mike Lazaridis, it became clear what RIM’s tablet strategy was — they didn’t have one.
In that article, I wrote:
RIM’s strategy so far is to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. To be even more specific, throw everything at the wall that the iPad isn’t and see what they can fool people into believing.In short, RIM doesn’t have a cohesive strategy to build or market the PlayBook or its ecosystem.RIM is doing everything it can to convince people that the PlayBook is not an iPad, and they are doing a great job. Unfortunately for RIM, people want an iPad, so all they’ve done is give consumers more reasons to not buy the PlayBook.Not even Apple could have planned RIM’s PlayBook strategy this good.
At the time, Lazaridis said “The BlackBerry PlayBook is an amazing tablet. The power that we have embedded creates one of the most compelling app experiences available in a mobile computing device today.”
Yet, they only shipped 500,000 since April 19.
Not only that, RIM’s co-CEO’s inability to launch the PlayBook properly is effectively killing the BlackBerry business. In April, RIM said it would not make its guidance for the first quarter citing lower than expected BlackBerry sales. I believe this is a direct result of the management fumbling the PlayBook.
RIM said it expected BlackBerry shipments to be on the lower end of the 13.5 million to 14.5 million forecasted in March. The actually number is 13.2 million.
Thursday’s financial results have showed us one thing. The problem with RIM is at the top. While RIM’s co-CEOs will cut employees, the company’s product strategy will continue to suffer at the hands of Lazaridis and Balsillie.
The time for excuses is over. It’s now time for the RIM shareholders to demand a change.