RIM: How Not To "Hit the Ground Running"RIM: How Not To "Hit the Ground Running"

The smartphone business, both consumer and enterprise, is driven by new imperatives and RIM is losing by continuing to stick to its old ways.

Research In Motion (RIM) has announced yet another plan for how they intend to reverse their precipitous slide in the smartphone business, a business they helped to create. Speaking at the BlackBerry Developers Conference in San Francisco, Co-CEO Mike Lazaridus announced a new plan for the company's software migration. The old plan was to phase out the current BlackBerry operating system (currently BlackBerry 5 or BlackBerry 6) after the next iteration (BlackBerry 7) and begin using QNX, the operating system on both the BlackBerry PlayBook and the smartphones. Now the plan is to have another operating system called BBX, which will combine the BlackBerry and QNX--no date for that new operating system was provided. As this was a "Developers Conference", I just pray no one was injured in the stampede to the exits.

Watching this story unfold reminded me of a trick I heard many years ago for working on roofs--I never tried it. This guy told me that if you're working on a roof and start to lose your balance what you should do is "Run down hill". This sounds rather counterintuitive, but he said the problem is that you've lost your balance because your center of gravity is off kilter and what you want to do is get your feet back underneath you again. Of course it is important to recognize the obvious limitations of such a strategy (i.e. the edge of the roof!), or you will give a new meaning to that phrase "Hit the ground running".

RIM is sprinting down that roof with total abandon. Back in 2009, I wrote a piece called "Standing on the RIM--(And Staring into the Abyss)", that predicted the ascendance of Android, the demise of WebOS, and a rapid decline for RIM unless they get their stuff together quickly and came up with something to slow the defection of consumer users. Well it's two years later and all of this is playing out with depressing fatalism. I also suggested RIM buy Motorola Mobility to get a play in the growing Android market; I think someone beat them to that. About the only thing I failed to predict was the bring your own device (BYOD) movement that triggered similar losses among enterprise users as well.

As everyone has given their assessments of how RIM managed to fall so far so fast, here's my list:

* Do Stuff People Can't Notice Real Well: RIM builds great products (for specific purposes) with a depth of quality engineering and design that's truly astounding. When you look at bread and butter capabilities like battery life, audio quality, radio/antenna technology, user interface design (for the aforementioned "specific purposes"), RIM builds a great product. Unfortunately, the first few iterations of the iPhone proved that people will bend over backwards (i.e. turn off Wi-Fi when not in use, charge the thing at every possible opportunity, etc.) if you do the stuff they really want to do. At this party, "bread and butter" doesn't hold up to ice cream and chocolate cake.

* Ignore Stuff People Really Want: Top of that list is apps, speed, simplicity, and a compelling touch screen interface. Apple flat out kills RIM in web access and network dependent apps that just work faster. RIM’s browser is "plodding"--Apple's sings. Even getting simple stuff to work on a BlackBerry is too much trouble. I was in Europe recently and had turned off the 3G data service on my BlackBerry to avoid the international data rip off; when I'm on vacation, I can wait for my email until I get back to the hotel. We stopped into a Starbucks in Vienna that had free Wi-Fi, and I was able to associate on the Wi-Fi network with no problem. However, when I tried to open a web page (to trigger the "I Accept" page) my BlackBerry told me there was a problem and I should contact my mobile operator. "Hello?" Those are the people I was trying to avoid.

* If you do Have Something People Want, Don’t Tell Them: The crazy thing is that there actually are a bunch of great apps for the BlackBerry (not "tens of thousands", but "a bunch"). They have Pandora and Slacker (Web Radio), Flixster (movies), Poynt and Superpages (local search), ScoreMobile (sports scores), Carfinder, WeatherBug, and BlackBerry Travel, which is hands down the best travel app a business user could every have. Have you ever seen an ad touting BlackBerry apps? The last major media campaign was to launch the PlayBook, a device that has virtually no applications at all.

* If They Find Out Anyway, Make It Virtually Impossible to Get: While the Apple (and for the most part Android) experience in finding and downloading apps has allowed those users to get a compelling experience right out of the box, the app store experience on BlackBerry App World is akin to going through customs in a third-world country. Users can't figure it out, and even if you try to help them (as I have on countless occasions with zero success), it's still a hit-or-miss affair. Based on my informal surveys, the vast majority of BlackBerry's consumer users have no App World apps on their devices at all, and those users are now planning to switch to iPhones--I wonder why?

* Make Lots of Promises, But Don't Give Any Dates: RIM's former OS plan (announced at BlackBerry World last spring) was to continue with the BlackBerry OS through BB 7, and then move all of the devices, smartphones and tablets, to QNX--there was no date for that. In the meantime, they would deliver basic stuff like calendar, contacts, and an email client for the PlayBook (without having to rely on the ridiculously slow BlackBerry Bridge trick to read them off your smartphone), and a player that would allow you to run Android apps. There were no dates for any of that, but the assumption was we would have them by now- we're still waiting. Regarding dates for the new BBX operating system, Ronjon Nag, VP for RIM's Blackberry App World told reporters, "When we have dates we'll tell you dates....But we don't want to raise expectations too early, and we don't want to confuse developers unnecessarily." Let's get this guy a job in marketing!

* Then Screw Up on the Stuff You Used to Do Well: A four-day network outage? I hope someone's getting fired over that.

* Failing To Recognize That Changing Your Whole Business Plan is Your Only Hope: Even with the downward trajectory, RIM can still survive, but only as a niche player catering to enterprises with specific needs that play to RIM's strengths. The consumer market is all but lost, and with the speed at which it moves, RIM has virtually no hope of catching up--certainly not with their traditional way of doing things. Had they totally refocused their energies after the initial touch screen Storm (released in November 2008) failed miserably, they might still have had a chance. When they followed it with another sub-par touch screen in the Tour (released July 2009), they were all but dead. Some of us still like that qwerty (and RIM makes a great keyboard), but that goes back to my point about doing stuff people don't care about really well.

In the end, it's about management. RIM has the technical expertise to deliver better products, if they simply focused on what customers actually want. The biggest gap is in failing to recognize what that is and getting their resources directed to it. That's marketing's job, but RIM doesn't have a chief marketing officer. The last one, Keith Pardy, announced he was leaving last March for "personal reasons", and he still hasn't been replaced.

Business is about change, and you have to manage for the business you’re in; if that changes, you have to change with it. Years ago the Paul Masson winery had an advertising campaign with the slogan, "We will sell no wine before its time." That's great for a winery, but it's sure not going to get you to the front of the pack in consumer electronics. RIM's management is still focused on "getting all the details right" before they launch the product, a reasonable approach when you're selling industrial goods to an audience that demands perfection. The smartphone business, both consumer and enterprise, is now driven by other imperatives and RIM is losing by continuing to stick to its old ways.

So a note to Messrs. Lazaridis and Balsillie: you built a great company, but when it finally staggers to its grave (or more likely gets bought out for a pittance), that's the part of the story everyone is going to remember.