Blackberry is as good as ever, but no better

30 January 2013 by Steve Blum
, , , , ,


None of this Tomfoolery for Blackberry!

What RIM, excuse me, Blackberry showed this morning was solid technology that’s ahead in some regards and more or less keeping up with the pack in others. The new Blackberry 10 operating system is consistent with what they demonstrated and described last October at MobileCon.

They have a full touchscreen phone and they’re keeping a keyboard model in play. That’s probably a good idea given that their best short term hope is to re-energize their legacy institutional customers.… More

RIM backing away from hardware

22 January 2013 by Steve Blum
, , ,

For sale?

RIM is talking about getting out of the hardware business and making a living licensing its soon-to-be-released Blackberry 10 operating system. They talked about getting into the OS licensing business at the Mobilecon show in October, although they seemed pretty intent on staying in the hardware business too at that point.

They’ll have a hard time transitioning to a licensing model. RIM’s selling proposition is beginning-to-end enterprise/institutional IT network support. Consumers don’t buy Blackberries, and that’s where the major manufacturers are focused.… More

RIM ends the game with Zip

11 November 2012 by Steve Blum
, , , , , ,
Remember the Iomega Zip drive? Back when laptops had 80 meg hard drives and a gig was just a dream, the 100 MB Zip super floppy was hot. But Iomega couldn’t push it beyond 750 MB.

ZipdriveI retired mine in 1997, and Iomega gradually moved it to the back of their catalog. Slowly. Even in the 2005 time frame, they still had Zip customers. Government agencies, mostly. Isolated from competitive pressures and soaked in a culture that often enshrines blame and ignores achievement, public sector IT life cycles are glacial.

More

Live from CTIA 1 April 2009: real time tweets

CTIA head Steve Largent talking at keynote sez wireless a bright spot in dismal economy.

Tmobile-USA CEO Robert Dotson also upbeat, so far speech is bland banalities, invoking Obama, Charles Lindbergh.

Dotson showing video talking up open source, sez on indy devs to drive innovation.

Dotson links stimulus bill, wireless broadband, rural connectivity & tmobile, guess who’s lining up for government cash?

CTIA survey sez people don’t want more taxes or regulation or to pay higher mobile phone bills.… More