Showing posts with label Research In Motion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Research In Motion. Show all posts

Monday, January 14, 2013

Unsung Hero Samsung

English: Samsung Logo Suomi: Samsungin logo
English: Samsung Logo Suomi: Samsungin logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It is almost like Samsung flew beneath the radar, and it is still not talked about as a major tech innovator by the mainstream press.

The Genius of Samsung
It is the world’s largest tech company by revenue, and in 2012 it became the world’s leading smartphone maker. .... Samsung’s smartphone market share in the third quarter last year beat that of Apple, Sony, HTC, and Research in Motion combined ..... Samsung’s smartphone proceeds have doubled in the past year ..... a brilliance exemplified by the way the company stumbled into success with the Galaxy Note: Samsung is willing to try anything. Actually, it’s willing to try everything. By building dozens of models across a range of product categories—it makes everything from phones to tablets to refrigerators to washing machines—Samsung can offer a device for every conceivable market niche. As long as its devices meet a minimum level of quality—and in general, its products are very good—and it manages to kill the failures and push the successes with great marketing, Samsung is sure to keep its place at the top of a roiling tech business. ...... The world’s tech-addled masses are switching from desktop devices to mobile ones, from bulky programs to sleek apps, from limited local storage to acres of space in the clouds. ..... By giving people what they wanted—even if it meant copying Apple—Samsung had become a global gadget powerhouse. ..... Since 2010, Samsung has deepened its technical prowess. Its design and workmanship have improved, and now its devices work just as well as Apple’s and no longer look like clones of Cupertino’s best stuff. ...... Samsung has become a master of marketing. Its commercials portraying Apple’s customers as mindless sheep were brazen—especially considering Samsung’s mimicry of Apple’s devices—but they were ubiquitous and beloved by Apple haters. They announced Samsung as a friendly, reasonable alternative to a cultish global brand. ...... there is something charmingly humble about Samsung’s see-what-sticks strategy. Other tech giants operate according to lofty philosophies. Apple prizes aesthetics and usability, Google cherishes the free flow of information, and Facebook wants to connect us all to one another. Samsung has no such philosophy. All it wants to do is make stuff that we’ll buy. ..... making phones that look exactly like your rivals’ devices, or making phones that are foolishly large, or making devices that run every conceivable operating system, or creating a fridge with a built-in baby monitor and an Evernote app ..... when one of its bets hits, Samsung knows how to push all of its resources into making it the next big thing .... The future is unknowable, so there’s no shame in guessing.
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Saturday, August 04, 2012

I Told You So: RIM To Android



A few days back I blogged saying if RIM wants to survive it should consider switching to Android. (RIM's Options, RIM's Waterloo)And now news is they are doing so. I am not saying I am the reason. Although it is mainstream practice for companies to follow chatter around them in the blogosphere and elsewhere. And it is not even that novel a thought. I am sure many people on the RIM team might have brought it up in internal meetings a long time ago. But I am glad to be in consonance.

It could modify Android if it wants, although why would you? Just because Amazon did it for the tablet does not mean.

Wait I wore the hat all wrong. It is past sense. RIM considered a switch to Android. And decided against it.

RIM CEO says company ‘seriously’ considered switch to Android
RIM took a long, hard look at migrating to Android before deciding to plow forward with BlackBerry 10. .... “We took the conscious decision not to go Android,” Heins told the Telegraph. ”If you look at other suppliers’ ability to differentiate, there’s very little wiggle room. We looked at it seriously — but if you understand what the promise of BlackBerry is to its user base it’s all about getting stuff done. Games, media, we have to be good at it but we have to support those guys who are ahead of the game. Very little time to consume and enjoy content — if you stay true to that purpose you have to build on that basis. And if we want to serve that segment we can’t do it on a me-too approach.”

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Thursday, August 02, 2012

RIM's Waterloo



This below is another commentary on a city's tech ecosystem. (Come Early)

There is a hint that a patent battle seriously marred the culture, and the downswing began. There is a lesson there for the big names in tech in the valley.

Will Yahoo turn around? Will RIM?


High and low: what RIM's failure is doing to the people of Waterloo
Redmond. Cupertino. Mountain View. ... Microsoft, Apple, Google .... Waterloo, Ontario, is another city stamped by the accomplishments of a tech giant. Research in Motion began there in 1984, and with its era-defining success came an influx of talent and a growing community. But RIM has stumbled ...... Coming from Detroit, the route to Waterloo is flat and grassy, a gently undulating expanse of land much like Ohio but with less obvious signs of industrialization. ..... Waterloo, population just shy of 100,000 ..... The University of Waterloo, alma mater of RIM co-founder Mike Lazaridis .... RIM itself lies just off the UW campus — indeed, there’s no real physical boundary between the two. .... About half of RIM’s workforce is located here, some 8,000 or so people ..... Their new CEO has been on a PR offensive, telling the press that the company’s not “in a death spiral.” RIM stock sits mired in the single digits, having lost 90 per cent of its value in the last three years. ..... the “worst corporate culture in the world.” After RIM lost a long and brutal patent battle with NTP in early 2006, he says, lawyers came to dominate the culture. The company’s earlier rapid growth had meant hiring a layer of lifelong managers, many of them risk-averse. Fiefdoms were carved out and protected; a degree of complacency settled in. After NTP, that complacency — especially about creating new products — was joined by an obsession with secrecy and legalistic wrangling. The environment inhibited new ideas; instead of daring to be bold, he says, employees worked in fear because, “if something goes wrong, someone has to get fired.” ....... the BlackBerry sips data compared to its competitors, it’s secure and reliable, it conveys a professional image (all of those belt holsters), and it has a physical keyboard. He thinks the layoffs could be good for the company; having grown too big too fast ........ The local tech industry has matured: Silicon Valley companies (including Intel, Google, and Facebook) have opened local offices and there’s a flourishing startup community. If RIM goes, he says, it’ll free up talent for other companies. ....... OpenText, the content management provider and Canada’s largest software company, for example, was spun out of the university in 1991, allowing several faculty members to found a company. The university values entrepreneurship. Mike Lazaridis, for one, received early encouragement to found RIM from a UW economics professor. He dropped out to start Research in Motion. ...... Iain Klugman .. “The American dream is to make it big, to build a big company, to become a rock star,” he says. “I think for many years the Canadian dream was to win the lottery.” ...... Waterloo and the surrounding area has the right combination of ingredients to enable tech entrepreneurs: strong academic brands, including UW and several other schools; a culture that accepts deviance (risking your future by going into business for yourself rather than someone else), and a network of capital comfortable with risk. He’s long been working to build on that foundation, and where the area had maybe 50 tech companies 15 years ago, today there are 1000 by his count. He says on average one local startup is founded every day. ........ I come from Kitchener-Waterloo, and yes, RIM has made it known on the world’s radar.” RIM is like a family member that’s done well ...... Co-founder Mike Lazaridis has donated $250 million to create the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, while Jim Balsillie spent $30 million to found the Centre for International Governance Innovation. Both men have donated generously to the University of Waterloo, with Lazaridis and his wife contributing over $100 million to the school’s affiliated research center, the Institute for Quantum Computing ...... “As much as I’m rooting for RIM, I have an iPhone.”
What are RIM's options?

Nokia used to be a paper manufacturing company.


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Saturday, February 11, 2012

Corporations And Now Government?

Steve Jobs while presenting the iPad in San Fr...Image via WikipediaRIM is in trouble. Their flagship BlackBerry is in serious trouble. The iOS assault is total.

BusinessWeek: U.S. Air Force May Buy 18,000 Apple IPad2s for Flight Crews

Steve Jobs stayed true to the consumer. That is how he started his career. That is how he ended his career. But now the iPhone and the iPad together are going places that Steve Jobs studiously avoided. He disliked the idea of having to sell to this one CIO person who would decide on behalf of hundreds and perhaps thousands of people working in that company. Instead he preferred to go straight to the consumer.

That still has not changed. It is not the CIOs of the world that are making these decisions. Those Apple loving consumers, guess what, many of them work for these companies. Ends up many of them also work for government.

And RIM is being pushed off the cliff.

Sunday, January 15, 2012