Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

RIM CEO terminates BBC Click interview

news.bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–76 of 76 posts

Re: RIM CEO terminates BBC Click interview

#71

Post by yuhong »

dotBen wrote: post #38

Rory Cellan-Jones, the interviewer, is a former colleague from my days at the BBC. Just to give some context, he is one of the BBC's most experienced business news journalists, in addition to being a more recent technology journalist. But in a word of sound-bites and short-quotes, I'm surprised Rory didn't consider - or at least pick up after the initial rebuttal - that if Lazaridis in any way answered the question p…

Now, I don't think basing compensation on stock price or judging companies based exclusively on stock price is a good idea, but that is a different topic.

Re: RIM CEO terminates BBC Click interview

#72

Post by reneherse »

btn wrote: post #11
tomelders wrote: post #2

Sounds to me like he misunderstood the question and assumed the Beeb were implying there's a serous security issue with the Blackberry device itself, when the question was actually about the "security" concerns of certain countries in which Blackberrys are sold.

At the very end of the clip, Lazaridis says in closing the interview: "this [the topic being discussed] is a national security issue". He knew exactly what was being asked; and even if the phrasing was better, he'd have given the same reaction.

Indeed, using "National Security Issue" seems more like a smokescreen in this case. RIM has bent over and opened their backdoor to various governments, and this CEO is trying hard to evade going on record about the issue.

Re: RIM CEO terminates BBC Click interview

#74

Post by yurisagalov »

bruceboughton wrote: post #33
blinkingled wrote: post #15

The interview showed glimpses of desperation, edginess and plain frustration which speak volumes about RIM's approach to handling the drastically altered smart phone market. Lazaridis kept using the words "singled out" - his reasoning behind it was because they were so successful. He was trying to convince that the carpet has not been pulled from below RIM's feet. It showed that RIM doesn't really "get" it. They thin…

Oddly, Blackberry is insanely cool amoung the teen crowd in the UK (well, London anyway). Not sure why, since they have no need for business class email. BBM seems to be the main driver, even though there are plenty of altenatives on other platforms.

I've seen a similar phenomenon in Canada. My sister (who is 17 now) and many of her friends traded in their iPhones two years ago for a Blackberry and you could not pay her enough money to switch back to an iPhone. I think it's a combination of the keyboard + BBM...

Re: RIM CEO terminates BBC Click interview

#75

Post by elvirs »

pedalpete wrote: post #65
JonnieCache wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Blackberry is insanely cool amoung the teen crowd in the UK It's definitely a London thing. They became hugely popular in the summer of 2009, rapidly making their way into the constantly shifting memepool that is the grime scene. Witness "Maxwell D - Blackberry Hype": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qtShEs5LQs Believe it or not this isn't paid product placement. Hence he lists RIM's competitors in the intro. They pr…

It is definitely not just a London thing. I was on a flight from Seattle to Los Angeles and the guy next (mid-20s) to me was using an old iPhone to play games. His phone was a blackberry. I found it really strange, but he told me that all of his friends were using BBM and he felt like he was left out, so he went back to BlackBerry. In Canada the Blackberry outsells Android in the teen crowd according to a report in t…

I can say the same is in Istanbul and Baku, iPhones are used for games only, its nice to have an iPhone but its percieved as really cool to use Blackberry as a phone for daily use.

Re: RIM CEO terminates BBC Click interview

#76

Post by uptown »

blauwbilgorgel wrote: post #59

I found the final words of the interview the most striking: >>This is not fair... What are you doing?... This is a national security issue. A national security issue for who? The US? Can't journalists ask questions about national security issues anymore? I can see why the US would be weary to have business people/officials traveling to a country where all their conversations can be monitored. But is this a CEO confir…

But RIM is a Canadian company.
Post reply on HN