BlackBerry

Ravi Mattu Has BlackBerry met its Waterloo?

February 6, 2013 3:11 pm by Ravi Mattu

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What happens when the cluster you helped create falls out of love with you? It is a question BlackBerry may be asking itself just a week after relaunching with a new name and a new phone.

According to a New York Times report, after years of being the beating commercial heart of Waterloo, Ontario, the company formerly known as Research in Motion is no longer the destination of choice for top talent. “BlackBerry is now a last resort,” it said.

And if that wasn’t tough enough for a former emblem of Canadian ingenuity, its position has been usurped either by US companies, “including Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft” or graduates launching their own businesses. Read more

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Posted in Business, Technology, Telecoms |

John Gapper The long list of Apple’s corporate victims

April 16, 2012 6:03 pm by John Gapper

Sarah Gordon points out that Nokia and Sony have a set of problems that undermined their capacity for innovation. But they are far from alone in being victims of Apple’s success.

In fact, the list of Apple victims is long and stretches across the media and technology. Since Steve Jobs unveiled iTunes and the iPod in 2001, starting Apple’s decade long rise to  dominance in consumer technology and electronics, his company has left many of its competitors wounded. Read more

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Posted in Business |

John Gapper A cautious revolution at Research in Motion

January 23, 2012 1:34 pm by John Gapper

The initial noises out of the shake-up at Research in Motion, although it was more far-reaching than had been expected, are not especially encouraging for the investors and analysts who want radical action.

Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, the joint chairmen and chief executives of the maker of BlackBerries, have relinquished both roles. But they have handed over to an insider who looks determined to stick to the same course.

Thorsten Heins, the new chief executive, told the FT:

“I want to maintain the focus on enterprise, but we need to communicate a bit more with our consumers. We need to do more marketing.”

 Read more

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Posted in Business, Technology, Telecoms |

John Gapper BlackBerry shows that sorry is not enough

October 17, 2011 7:57 pm by John Gapper

Research in Motion’s offer to compensate its users affected by the BlackBerry network failure of the past week with $100 of free applications is a neat idea in that it costs the company far less than the apparent gain to its customers.

Given the zero cost of distribution and the fact that RIM only has to pay the wholesale cost to publishers of games such as Sims 3 – as well as gaining the benefit of hooking BlackBerry users into its ecosystem, it is a modest price to pay. Read more

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Posted in Technology, Telecoms |

Andrew Hill The real crisis for BlackBerry’s messengers

October 12, 2011 4:49 pm by Andrew Hill

For people unable to communicate easily via BlackBerry, BlackBerry users are making a lot of noise. Faced with a third day of disruption to BlackBerry services around the world, they’re venting their outage outrage on Twitter and in the blogosphere. Many are reaching the same conclusion: this is a communications crisis for Research in Motion.

Well, no. As one of BP’s advisers commented last year when the oil company was being lambasted for its response to the Deepwater Horizon explosion: “It’s not a PR crisis; it’s a crisis.” Read more

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Posted in Business, Management, Technology, Telecoms |