Sunday, April 17, 2011

RIM Goes the Way of DEC?

We have all seen the announcement and critique of the new Research In Motion (RIM) PlayBook Tablet computer.  There are several major elements of this situation that caught my eye:
  • The PlayBook operates around a bundled concept with other RIM products.  Right now, you can not get your email or calendar on a PlayBook that is not “tethered” to a Blackberry.
  • The PlayBook operates the way that RIM wants it to work, and not the way that customers want to use it.  RIM believes that they hold the only approach for email that meets corporate security requirements.  Or, all email has to go through Canada.
  • The CEOs (there are two for heaven’s sake) do not seem to understand that the two items above are catastrophic.  Or, just give us time while the iPad, iPhone and Andriod Tablets and Phone make RIM obsolete.
To people that have a little more experience (that is their first use of a computer may have through an ASR-33 and paper tape), this situation may seem eerily familiar.  Another company that set the early “personal” computer pace, I contend, had each of the above elements that contributed to its marginalization and eventual failure and sale.

At one time, Digital Equipment Corporation, or DEC to its customers, set the pace on moving computers from behind the glass of the shrine of the mainframe priestly elite and into the hands of programmers and engineers.  DEC created machines that could be used to meet the imagination of its customers.  An ecosystem of software developers and user groups provided support for what at one time was the fastest growing computer company in the world, and a company that set its sights on IBM.

Much has been written about the demise of DEC (or Digital as it was officially known before it was sold to Compaq).  A great compendium of what killed DEC is “DEC Is Dead, Long Live DEC: The lasting legacy of Digital Equipment Corporation”.  From this source, and my personal experience, the analogy goes something like this:
  • DEC products works with DEC products.  DECnet was at one time the best networking environment in the world connecting millions of terminals.  However, DEC did not support TCP/IP directly (you had to by the software from a company in Australia) for many years on their VAX computer line.
  • DEC came out with three different Personal Computer concepts.  One around the PDP-8 architecture which was already more than a dozen years old.  Another was very close to being IBM PC compatible (it had an 8086 processor, etc.) but would not run the vast majority of the already available software.
  • The CEO that made the meteoric rise and just as thunderous fall was Ken Olsen.  Ken believed that only DEC could do things right, that they were not in the business to copy the emerging standard, and that the market would see just how wonderful DEC’s product genius is and flock to a machine that locks-in customer investment.
The bottom line is that RIM is in for trouble, just as DEC experienced.  The dominant designs are out and there are 10 million Andriod activations each month, and I am sure that Apple is right there as well.  RIM has tried two marketing efforts to stave off becoming the third player, and eventually a very distant one at that.  First, they tried to make the Blackberry “cool” by hiring U2 for promotion ads for the Blackberry Torch.  Sorry, but Apple products are Cool – everyone else plays catch-up.  Second, they are trying to differentiate their “apps” market as having Super Apps.  Let me see, so I am an application writer so I am going to forgo the several hundred million Apple and Andriod device market just so I can say that my Super App only runs in a Blackberry.  Not too darn likely.

So, the bottom line is that RIM better figure out what their customers really want, and not rely on the fact that they essentially created the set of wireless PDAs and then smartphone that became the benchmark for others to reach.  Unfortunately, it may have been reached and exceeded by so much that RIM will be the subject of a new book: RIM is Dead, Long Live RIM…

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