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BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

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Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

#121

Post by scrabble »

icefox wrote: post #64
w1ntermute wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should've moved to Android by 2011, when it was obvious that it was going to become dominant. If they'd built touchscreen phones with slide-out keyboards (like the Motorola Droid) and built an Android-based OS that also included their proprietary messaging and email solutions, I imagine they would be quite successful now.

Not sure if you are tolling, but to move to Android by 2011 they would have had to start in 2010 or 2009. The first Android release was September 23, 2008 and you remember how ummm "good" it was right? And on so many devices too and "obvious" that it was going to become dominant. So they could either keep printing money with their existing OS they own and know or migrate to an unknown and new operating system made by…

I had a meeting with a BB VP in 2009. I had seen my friend's HTC and asked what we were doing in response to Android.

He asked me, "What's Android?"

Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

#122

Post by jlgreco »

205guy wrote: post #100
potatolicious wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or "Civilization IV", which had this narrated by Leonard Nimoy :)

Am I the only one around here... Who was not educated by pop culture references, But actually remembers reading this in school? Yeah, yeah, I get it, it's fun when we find subtle references to pop culture in the greater world around us. But it just seems wrong when the pop reference replace the actual culture (or maybe the irony is so subtle as to seem non-ironic, ironically--or something). Somebody should update the…

Eh, I suspect there were people who thought the same as you when Shakespeare packaged up Greek mythology and fart jokes for the unwashed masses.

Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

#123

Post by 001sky »

riggins wrote: post #88
ChuckMcM wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are always more easily seen looking from the future into the past, than they are in the past looking to the future. Few companies, with the market share RIM had, see threats as 'near term'. Fewer still have a deep appreciation for the entirety of the technology stack and the time it takes to move things. This is especially true of young executives but can happen to anyone. RIM's technology stack matured over ma…

In airplanes once you are behind the curve there is literally nothing you can do which will prevent you from eventually crashing. The same it true in companies. I'm going to say the physics of aerodynamics is not a good analogy for business competition.

A good metaphor here is angle of attack. If you try to fly at too steep an angle of attack, you just stall. If you say right out of the gate that you want to raise a $5 million series A round, unless you're in a very strong position, you not only won't get that but won't get anything. Better to start at a low angle of attack, build up speed, and then gradually increase the angle if you want.

Seems the anologies come in handy, though. He's basically saying momentum needs to be respected. And key inflection points, once missied, may not re-appear.

Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

#124

Post by jzwinck »

L_Rahman wrote: post #20
spodek wrote: post #2

The timeless story of Ozymandias -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias -- (if you don't know the 1818 sonnet by Shelley, read it before downvoting. It's relevant and timeless) I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sc…

Bryan Cranston of this to promote the second half of the final season of Breaking Bad. It's set to some beautiful shots of the New Mexico desert. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3dpghfRBHE

"Not available in your country."

This is absurd, considering what I imagine the content to be.

Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

#125

Post by Pxtl »

martythemaniak wrote: post #35

I've been thinking about RIM lately and I think they basically had chances to turn themselves around, but took neither. The first was in '08/'09 - shortly after the iPhone. Some companies (Google, Samsung) saw where the industry was going, made the appropriate decisions and are now profiting handsomely. In hindsight, that was the right time for RIM to acquire QNX and start on BB10, which might have done very well had…

Yeah, I really worry about Waterloo. The city is basically a company town. If Rim folds, all the geeks could roll up their tracks and head for Toronto or the USA, leaving the city broken. I mean, they'd still have the university...but that's not enough.

Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

#126

Post by mitchty »

mkr-hn wrote: post #62
mitchty wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also cisco ios, which would also feature heavily on the web I would imagine.

I doubt enough people are searching for information on an enterprise networking operating system to overwhelm the volume of people searching for information on a major consumer mobile operating system.

True, but its more in line with ios the operating system.

Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

#127

Post by canistr »

jusben1369 wrote: post #50
canistr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would add culture to that whereby executive leadership and downward did not admit to problems and felt the platform was infallible. As a graduate of Waterloo, I can attest that between 2008-2011 people in the KW area were steadfast in denying the future of mobile and the underlying problems at RIM/BlackBerry.

I would agree with you. In a former life I had interactions with BB in a sales capacity. I sold into or had customers at many of the Top 50 "tech" companies. BB/Rim had one of the strangest, most insular cultures I came across. Maybe early on they felt really patronized by US/SV VC's/companies etc and so were anti US. Either way it was quite odd. I really wondered how that would end up working out for them.

It's hard to really put a finger on whether it's a part of being Canadian or whether particular businesses and corporations are constantly in search a state of denial. For the longest time, Microsoft was in the state of denial about their competition and refused to admit they were/are far behind them.

But on the other hand, you have Silicon Valley culture that tends to fuel adoption and promotion of products/startups in the Valley. So I feel as though while it's true that RIM/BlackBerry was for some time judged unfairly by Americans and Wall Street.

Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

#128

Post by 205guy »

jlgreco wrote: post #122
205guy wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one around here... Who was not educated by pop culture references, But actually remembers reading this in school? Yeah, yeah, I get it, it's fun when we find subtle references to pop culture in the greater world around us. But it just seems wrong when the pop reference replace the actual culture (or maybe the irony is so subtle as to seem non-ironic, ironically--or something). Somebody should update the…

Eh, I suspect there were people who thought the same as you when Shakespeare packaged up Greek mythology and fart jokes for the unwashed masses.

Right, but since then, we've attempted to give everyone a liberal arts education. But many are resistant to that and prefer the teat of the entertainment industry.

Nothing wrong with hearing about something on TV and googling it (Wikipedia has revolutionized instant knowledge in this way). It's the people who don't dig deeper and don't realize the prior reference and deeper meaning to begin with. And so it seems like they're missing the subtle reference to the real world in the TV show.

Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

#129

Post by JesseObrien »

bsaul wrote: post #79

started developping apps for mobile in 2009. at that time, i aimed for ios development and blackberry. it took me 2 months to get my first app on ios, and i thought "ok, now let's start learning about blackberry". So, i downloaded their doc. iirc, they had three ways to develop apps. one was using web technology, and you couldn't do much. then they had two different sets of java apis : an old, discontinued one, with…

I had almost this exact same scenario happen to me. As a developer, I was excited to see what new fun things at the time (2009) were coming out of RIM. To my dismay, like yours, I couldn't even get a hello world to run after much tinkering and configuring. After I learned that they didn't even use the SDK they released into the wild in their own development, I knew it was a lost company. Dogfood and all that.

Re: BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M

#130

Post by bloaf »

mjburgess wrote: post #99
jmduke wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something particularly ironic about calling Ozymandias timeless.

The poem is itself ironic... it's about Ramses III who rule c. 1000 BC and yet was famous enough that poetry would be inspired by him 3000 years later.

Lacking belief in an afterlife, many early civilizations instead strove to achieve immortality in "kleos": the fame that does not decay.
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