RIM is dying because it got the future of phones completely wrong
AP file photo
The company made a decision to stick with email-focused devices.
Following yesterday's sad quarterly earnings report that confirmed the deterioration at Research in Motion we've heard about for the last year, The Wall Street Journal's Will Connor tells us why exactly the BlackBerry maker failed so hard, and it has a lot to do with getting everything wrong about the future of phones. When faced with the decision to make an iPhone competitor, for example, RIM didn't see that kind of smartphone as a real threat, predicting businesses and individuals would stick with the e-mail-centric device. Most telling of RIM's inability to see in the future, the Canadian company kept this mentality even when multiple wireless carriers came to the hardware maker for an iPhone alternative. As Connor writes:
In 2010, AT&T Inc., then Apple's exclusive carrier partner, approached RIM about a plan to develop a touch-screen rival to the iPhone, said two former RIM executives. The chief of AT&T's mobile division visited RIM's research and development team in Waterloo to stress how important it was for AT&T to have a successful BlackBerry product to sell, according to people familiar with the visit. RIM said the objective of the visit was to develop "a differentiated, unique BlackBerry experience for AT&T customers."
Read more at The Atlantic Wrie.