RIM has announced it's going to remove the PlayBook's ability to sideload applications. The company claims it's to prevent the piracy problems in the "chaotic cesspool of Android Market". However, the company provided no evidence, studies, or whatever to back up their claims. Considering the state of RIM's business, I'd say the company has bigger fish to fry, but alas. At this point, I'm just hoping they don't do a BeOS, but open the QNX code before they go belly-up.
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Member since:2006-01-25
I'm assuming that was a joke, right...?
RIM only paid $200 million for QNX outright. I have never seen P&L for Hamon International breaking down revenue by product division, but I would be shocked if QNX generated even half of RIM's purchase price in annual income from licensing (otherwise RIM would have had to pay far more for it).
Update: Actually, I just found this: http://blog.vdcresearch.com/embedded_sw/2010/04/update-2-rim-to-acq.... It appears analysts put $200 million to be 5X QNX's revenue. If that was 100% profit, it would still be only $40 million a year... Not much. At all. RIM probably spends more than that on travel expenses...
RIM's annual revenue (as of 2011) is nearly $20 billion, with close to $3.5 billion in income. If RIM started licensing QNX now to 3rd parties and made back their purchase price in one year that would still be only 5% of their profits. And that is extremely optimistic - I really don't see much reason at all that they would be any more successful than Harmon International was at licensing it.
QNX is a great RTOS, and there is a market for it. But the traditional embedded market just doesn't have the volume it would take to make it make it worthwhile for RIM to bother. Either that make it work as their flagship OS or they will fail - licensing it is an act of desperation. The only exception might be getting a Samsung/LG/HTC or someone like that to license it (i.e. someone selling ALOT of high dollar hardware), but I just don't see that happening...
Im with everyone else - hopefully they can sell/open source QNX before the ship sinks.
Edited 2012-04-10 01:41 UTC
Member since:2009-03-27
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Member since:
2009-03-27
One would think that QNX alone would be profitable enough to hold RIM over?