RIM 'Open Letter' Tells All

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Eric Mack, PCWorld




The view from inside RIM is pretty bleak these days. At least that's picture painted by an open letter to the company's management, purportedly from a high-level employee at the company.

"I have lost confidence," the letter begins. "While I hide it at work, my passion has been sapped. I know I am not alone -- the sentiment is widespread and it includes people within your own teams."

The manifesto makes an apparently sincere plea to turn the struggling company around, noting that RIM is ". . . in the middle of major 'transition' and things have never been more chaotic. Almost every project is falling further and further behind schedule at a time when we absolutely must deliver great, solid products on time."

The letter switches back and forth between referring to its author as "I" and "we," making it appear as though more than one employee was involved in its drafting, although it is signed simply 'A RIM Employee.'"

The bulk of the letter centers around eight broad suggestions for places where the company can improve, under subheads like "Focus on the End User Experience," and offers specifics like: " Let's start an internal innovation revival with teams focused on what users will love instead of chasing 'feature parity' and feature differentiation for no good reason (Adobe Flash being a major example)."

The letter also reveals and confirms a number of problems within RIM, including a perceived lack of leadership and communication in the software management department, lack of overall focus, and lackluster development tools for RIM devices. A note about "shipping incomplete products that aren't ready for the end user" seems like a dig at RIM's recent PlayBook tablet release, which has seen underwhelming sales.

The missive is also rife with comparisons to Apple and Google's success and directly addresses the company's dual CEOs at one point, suggesting it may be time for new leadership: "There is no shame in no longer being a CEO. Mike (Lazaridis), you could focus on innovation. Jim (Balsillie), you could focus on our carriers/customers..."

RIM quickly posted a response to the open letter, in which the company expresses doubts that it actually came from a high-level employee, but then goes on to address some of its concerns. The response concedes that the company's transition has taken longer than anticipated, but claims that RIM is seeing strong growth and profitability and looking forward to the upcoming release of its QNX operating system, which is also referenced in the anonymous letter.

"There is much excitement and optimism within the company about the new products that are lined up for the coming months," the company responds.

Apparently, that depends whom you ask.

[Arkady Renko]

they had a unique selling proposition for a while and failed to come up with an equally good replacement when everyone else could do what they can. I bet they're gonna switch to android before the year is over.

[Godfather]

Saw this yesterday. Really interesting. I hope they don't switch to droid... I still find it a tad bit toy-ish.

I want RIM to rebound, pull its head out of its ass and pull through. It has shown it can be a strong company, I like that it's Canadian. Still has a good piece of the market but they need some changes before 2012 or it could fizzle out.

[Deepsepia]

they had a unique selling proposition for a while and failed to come up with an equally good replacement when everyone else could do what they can. I bet they're gonna switch to android before the year is over.

Its an interesting case: sometimes a market is too valuable for the company that holds it. RIM hit on a massive market, but just couldn't bring the resources to bear to deliver what the market wanted.

The demand from the public for every-more-capable devices is staggering-- right now, even Apple's iPhone 4 is looking a little tired. You don't keep up with the pace, you lose-- its one of the reasons that technology business is hard.

I think they're more likely to go Microsoft than Android, though. MSFT has a lot of reasons for wanting to play in the smartphone space, and will pay billions of dollars to do so. Google won't pay them anything to adopt Android.

[PorkChopSandwiches]

i could have told rim this years ago, they are confident in burning this company to the ground with its awful service and products

[Deepsepia]

This is a management problem. Starts at the top . . . RIM had a great franchise, and still has a valuable niche, but they need focus.

Their constituency is corporate IT, folks who like the fact that they're not a general purpose consumer product. RIM better work harder at differentiating themselves from Apple, because they're not going to beat them at their game. The Playbook has some nice stuff, but the basic idea and branding is crazy -- since when is RIM about entertainment? And the notion that what's missing from the iPad is the ability to play Flash games. . . just crazy.


Company needs new management, pronto.

[deebakes]