Inside RIM: The Rise And Fall Of The Company That Made Smartphones Smart

Research In Motion is in the midst of a major transition in every sense of the word. Publicly, the company is portraying a very defensive image — one that is very dismissive, as if RIM is profitable and class-leading, and the media is out of line to criticize its business, as are investors. Internally, however, there’s a different story to be told. It’s a story filled with attitude, cockiness, heated arguments among the executive team and Co-CEOs, and paranoia. We’ve spoken to multiple ex-RIM executives at length about their experiences with the company over the past few years. While most speak highly of RIM and their time in Waterloo, they also each left the company due mainly to RIM’s lack of vision and leadership. Read on for an exclusive inside look at a company teetering on the edge between greatness and collapse.

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See Also:

• RIM Isn't Making Any Money On The PlayBook
• RIM's Co-CEOs Have "Titanic" Arguments In Front Of Employees
• No, RIM Doesn't Need To Split Up -- It Needs To Travel Back In Time

Inside RIM: The Rise And Fall Of The Company That Made Smartphones Smart

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Comment on The Rise of the “Second Internet” and What It Means by Tyler

I stopped reading when I saw "Figure 3" and saw that every entry on it except for casual gaming was completely and utterly false.

Comment on The Rise of the “Second Internet” and What It Means by Tyler

Backlink: http://gigaom.com/2011/03/31/the-rise-of-the-second-internet-and-what-it-means/#comment-613797

Comment on Apple and the Rise of the Subscription Economy by Ed

the argument re developers needing subscript[on services is a valid one and one that I would accept. they need a flow of money to maintain and improve the app. But I see no justification for Apple skimming 30% off the top. that is far too much for the minimal investment Apple has in any individual App. If Apple were selling their software thru, say, Amazon and Amazon took 30% off the top, Apple would scream blue murder and all the fan boys supporting Apple in this controversy would be blasting Amazon.

Comment on Apple and the Rise of the Subscription Economy by Ed

Backlink: http://gigaom.com/apple/apple-and-the-rise-of-the-subscription-economy/#comment-595411

Comment on Groupon’s Rise and eBay’s Decline by Sun

Except eBay's mobile app is a big piece-o-crap. It does not have View Full Site. The GetSatisfaction site has a lot of complaints from mobile users about the mobile version is missing features and there is no explicit View Full Site link (it is the eBay logo on the lower right). But once you go back to the full site, you are redirected to mobile, so you end up not being able to do what you wanted. Yes, mobile is a very promising arena for commerce, but again eBay fails in big ways there.

Comment on Groupon’s Rise and eBay’s Decline by Sun

Backlink: http://gigaom.com/2010/12/06/groupon%e2%80%99s-rise-and-ebay%e2%80%99s-decline/#comment-544953

Comment on Groupon’s Rise and eBay’s Decline by sun

There are gross sales (income) and business expenses which give you a net margin. What is a gross margin? Groupon is still new and while it may be a darling of many, it has also received a lot of negative word of mouth from business owners. Groupon also has a lot to learn in terms of site performance, stability, and design. When the Nordstrom Rack Groupon was published, the traffic made for a very poor buyer experience. Buyers were also allowed to buy $50 GC for $25 from various cities then converting these GCs online to Nordstrom (not Rack) gift cards. The inability to print Groupons righ away is annoying. You also don't have a clear way to integrate user accounts between Groupon login and Facebook login. Groupon is a one trick pony. It only has the first to market advantage and they will only be successful as the amount of white powder they can blow up the ass of business owners.

Comment on Groupon’s Rise and eBay’s Decline by sun

Backlink: http://gigaom.com/2010/12/06/groupon%e2%80%99s-rise-and-ebay%e2%80%99s-decline/#comment-542949

Comment on Android Still on Top; Now Crushing BlackBerry by LG Optimus and the Rise of the Cheap Androids!: Tech News «

[...] That’s a potential issue for companies that have traditionally owned the feature phone market in countries around the globe. Google’s Android platform is making the move down into lower priced devices and if it can offer the smartphone experience at a feature phone price, its rising dominance as a platform will simply accelerate even faster. [...]

Post originale: http://gigaom.com/2010/11/01/android-still-on-top-now-crushing-blackberry/#comment-495627

IT Spending Will Rise in 2011

There's always next year. A new Wedbush survey reported on by ZDNet suggests that IT managers will have deeper pockets in 2011, and stalled projects will start to get off the ground. The survey of 100 IT management decision makers found that: 

Sixty-six percent of IT execs say that implementation of new software platforms were critical, up from 47 percent in the second quarter survey. SaaS, collaboration, HR and ERP projects are all in demand and rated high priority projects. Potential winners: Salesforce.com, SuccessFactors, Oracle, and SAP.

Forty-seven percent are upgrading to the latest Microsoft Exchange and 23 percent are rolling out partial deployments. The big reason is Exchange support for multiple devices.

Network deployments such as security, routing/switching, collaboration and performance management are all rated a top priority. Video and voice collaboration were also seen as critical projects by 61 percent of respondents. Winners may include Cisco and Polycom on that front.

52 percent said that shifting data warehouse projects to appliance deployments was a big priority. Oracle's Exadata machine was rated a high priority by 45 percent of respondents.

Each one of these bullet points hints at possible IT employment trends in the coming months. As always, networking, virtualization, and cloud-based implementations seem to be top of mind for IT going into 2011.

 -- Don Willmott

Post originale: http://career-resources.dice.com:80/articles/content/entry/it_spending_will_rise_in

Compete Top 50: Bing And Ask Rise – MySpace, MapQuest And Flickr Fall

Online analytics company Compete has just published its ranking of the top 50 websites for September 2010, giving some insights into current visitor trends (and not absolute numbers, as the company tends to undercount traffic for most websites). Compete's data compilation shows increasing traffic to Microsoft's search engine Bing (up 11.7 percent for the month and 108.5 percent for the year) as well as Ask.com (up 8.7 percent for the month and 75.3 percent for the year).

Post originale: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/TN5-i3URmCM/

The rise and fall of Apple's iPod -- in charts -- via Fortune's Philip Elmer-DeWitt.

The rise and fall of Apple's iPod, in chart format, via Fortune's Philip Elmer-DeWitt.

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The Rise and Fall of America's Jet-Powered Car

Pickens writes "The WSJ reports that the automobile designs of these 1950s and 1960s were inspired by the space race and the dawn of jet travel but one car manufacturer, Chrysler, was bold enough to put a jet engine in an automobile that ran at an astounding 60,000 rpm on any flammable fluid including gasoline, diesel, kerosene, jet fuel, peanut oil, alcohol, tequila, or perfume. Visionary Chrysler designer George Huebner believed that there was plenty to recommend the turbine. People loved the car. In a publicity scheme to promote its 'jet' car, Chrysler commissioned Ghia to handcraft 50 identical car bodies and each car would be lent to a family for a few months and then passed on to another. Chrysler received more than 30,000 requests in 1962 to become test drivers and eventually 203 were chosen who logged more than one million miles (mostly trouble free) in the 50 Ghia prototypes. In the end Chrysler killed the turbine car after OPEC's 1973 oil embargo. 'How different would America be now if we all drove turbine-powered cars? It could have happened. But government interference, shortsighted regulators, and indifferent corporate leaders each played a role in the demise of a program that could have lessened US.dependence on Middle East oil.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Post originale: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/seb3EcenRxo/story01.htm

Comment on Free or Not, Femtocell Deployments Are on the Rise by Wi-Fi Looks to Keep the Mobile Internet Dream Alive: Tech News «

[...] have struck deals with Boingo to offer more wireless access. And all the carriers are turning to femtocells and UMA technology to extend coverage in home. But they’re aware that it won’t be enough, something that [...]

Post originale: http://gigaom.com/2010/06/22/free-or-not-femtocell-deployments-are-on-the-rise/#comment-299036