RIM just announced some pretty disastrous financial results, but in the press release, there’s something very telling, and quite worrisome for those of us rooting for the Canadian company: BlackBerry 10 has been delayed until the first quarter of 2013. I don’t want to call it at this point, but it ain’t looking good.
You disappoint. =_=
You know when you are a beginner at chess and you play against somebody who’s far better and able to see several moves in advance? And you lost almost all your pieces, but you don’t quit until you are checkmate, and you keep shuffling your king around while your opponent’s pieces are closing in?
Yeah.
taking the concept of “missing the boat” to a whole new level.
There is a rather portly woman practicing her scales right now.
Today, in addition to their poor financial results and BlackBerry 10 being delayed, they announced that they will be laying off 5000 workers, 1/3 of their workforce. I really want RIM to succeed, but things are not looking good at all.
Meh, stick a fork in ’em. They’re done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Xrlf3taEo
Damn it RIM!
Looks like another WebOS in the making.
And killing QNX in the process, my god NOOOOOOOO!
If only they would release it under a BSD/MIT license….
And so the scavengers are circling, dreaming about most tasty bites …yeah, seems they’re done.
Damn it. I’ve been waiting for decades for QNX to become successful – yes, decades – I first used QNX back in the mid-80’s on the Canadian-made Burroughs ICON (Microtel).
Actually, as a Canadian, this failure of RIM comes as no surprise. It’s just another in a long line. Once a Canadian company becomes large and successful, it invariably gets destroyed through incompetence, American buyouts or mysterious conspiracy. ATI? Nortel? Avro? Inco? Alcan? Eatons, The Bay, Tim Hortons? Where are the Canadian car companies? (even frigging Madagascar has its own car company)
Actually, as a Canadian, why do you have a very American computer in your avatar and nick?
(yes, Commodore had some Canadian beginnings – but that was largely before computers; and they simply moved; and Amiga team was a Bay Area affair)
Don’t forget Corel!
Oh yes I remember the Icon computers from high school. A bunch of us were the “PET” gang, so we worked hard to annoy those people trying to administer them.
We really found it handy that the password file was unencrypted so once you got root (using “login +s and login” and a few CTRL-D/Z sequences) you had all the passwords. Add to that the fact you could redirect output of any command to another computer (and it was a telidon graphics display so you could display annoying graphics!) it made high school quite amusing.
Ahh the days!
Edited 2012-06-29 20:59 UTC
Ha! I got all the passwords too, then made the stupid mistake of showing a friend how I did it. He showed others and suddenly everybody was hacking everybody’s account. Some even started stealing my programs to pass off as their own and get better grades. That’s when it stopped being fun.
BTW (and since you apparently don’t want to explore why there’s not-quite-Canadian computer in your nick & av ;p ), I stumbled once on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisys_ICON and wondered about any ~screenshots… (particularly of the mentioned GUI environments; nothing really in the external links of that Wiki article) But oh well, I guess you don’t have the whereabouts of any – and describing them from memories wouldn’t really do the trick. ;P
I suppose it’s a slightly fascinating topic for me, old “country-specific” computers (perhaps because my place barely had any of the ~consumer kind)
Overall, WRT to Canadian companies… Bombardier? Also, hm… Matrox?
(and I imagine The Bay is a shadow of its former self, with Canada as a country no longer being just a front for Hudson’s Bay Company – but what’s not right with Tim Hortons?)
But come on, you do have extensive automotive industry (definitely much better than that of Madagascar, with its minuscule assembly of very old ~Renault models)
PS. while making sure of the Bombardier’s name I was reminded about one (~”teen adventure”?) TV series, probably Canadian considering the ~fjord (or fjord-like lake), ~northern, forested environment, the overall progressiveness of the depicted ~family, and that, IIRC, they had a de Havilland Canada Beaver or Otter with floats at their disposal (also a mini-sub that was sabotaged and almost couldn’t surface, in one ep). Any idea what it was?
Edited 2012-07-06 00:18 UTC
There is no way that QNX dies with RIM. Stop fooling yourself, QNX will be the priced money cow when if rim goes belly up. The patent portfolio is enormous the product is good, and used in more places than anyone think. The qnx division has posted profits for 30 years almost, it will not die with RIM. Unless someone calls the “evil” card ofcourse.
“The priced money cow” probably isn’t the most fortunate description… IIRC, RIM didn’t pay that much for QNX – so the revenue and profits of QNX (and/or potential revenues from patents) can’t be that high.
(but yeah, it’s unlikely to be left to die, if only because it’s used in quite a few “important” places – and I imagine those have some deal which will, more or less, warrant at least continued maintenance, no matter what)
..for refusing to use Android as your base OS.
Should have seen it coming, first HP, then Nokia and RIM is next.. that assuming they can even pull out a device at this point.
They didn’t even have to do that (though arguably they may as well have) – they just needed to get a partnership with amazon to use their App Store for BlackBerry10/PlaybookOS, or better yet, with google play (though I doubt they would do it – but who knows). Sure they’d lose some app sales, but I wonder how much they are making off that anyway.
They came so close to making this a real possibility tech-wise, it is really too bad.
Edited 2012-06-29 03:50 UTC
I read that only Samsung is making decent money on Android. I saw that Apple has 80% of mobile profits, Samsung 10%, and everyone else is in the remaining 10%. Would RIM becoming just another Android pusher save them?
Source?
*If* there is a deathcount for RIMM, I agree that QNX will probably be spun off and won’t die.
I’m not surprised though, that this happened. Perhaps the underpinnings of the OS has some useful architecture, but in practice, there’s too much work, not only by internal staff, but also by partners and vendors (hardware and software) to go from the base QNX install (with proof-of-concept applications) to a full-fledged, polished deliverable. QNX as a business, does not have those useful relationships nor the right frame of mind – like Google, Apple or Microsoft to be successful. QNX’s approach? “We don’t need those relationships, because we’ll also support Android applications! By virtue of our architecture, we’ll have those relationships through a proxy!” Years ago, they did that also with Linux by supporting X windows. “You can now run all of your X windows applications through QNX!”
We have to recognize that the barrier to entry is higher than it was 5 years ago and a good product cannot be made behind closed doors. I’m sure that Apple, with all of their secrecy, still relies a lot on their partners to develop, integrate and deliver. This is where QNX is lacking against other large OS companies. It is what I experienced 15 years ago when I worked with them.
I don’t have insider information, so take this as you will, but I believe that this delay isn’t because the hardware engineering or manufacturing planning. I believe that this is a software problem and management didn’t have the experience with QNX to know that you can’t just plop it into flash and expect it to work flawlessly. They can’t expect to get by on the old IDE and toolsets, those might need to be recreated. This is consistent with the experience that every developer who used QNX to build an “all-in-one”/convergence device in the last 18 years ended up.
For the rest of us, I think that we need to learn that technology doesn’t exist without the business. The two are intertwined and you can’t just say, “QNX is great” without considering how f*cking sh*tty their organizational structure is for any use case that involves partnerships.
Please read my past posts if you want to know more about my viewpoints of QNX.
RIM is so desperate it’s contemplating using windows phone instead:
http://www.businessinsider.com/rims-board-is-considering-joining-fo…
Who do you think is bought by MS first: RIM or Nokia?
If I were MS I would buy nokia. Much better brand and resembles more closely what MS wants. RIM… What does it really have to offer?
RIM has lots of government contracts.
That’s about it as far as valuable assets is concerned, from what I can tell.