Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
Well, few could argue that it’s been a long week (month, year, years) for BlackBerry. This one-time proud (and oddly-named) non-polar bear or hockey monument to Canada has seen its shining star dimmed to a nearly imperceptible glimmer. Sure, that dimming could be blamed on Canada slowing rotating into the long, dark months of winter, but this slide has been going on far too long to blame on one season.
I have probably spent way too much space in these columns talking about the trials and tribulations of Canada’s foremost maker of devices with the name “BlackBerry” on them, but with its most recent news, I feel there is need for just a bit more.
This week news popped that BlackBerry had ditched its CEO as well as plans to go private. Both of those announcements were not a big surprise considering companies make such decisions all the time, but the timing of the decisions was most telling.
The CEO shown the door was Thorsten Heins, who in case you forgot was just given the keys to the executive bathroom 21 months ago, or basically not nearly enough time to decorate said room to his exact liking. For a company that was in such peril when Heins came into the new position to just as quickly kick him to the curb shows the level of disarray happening at 1 BlackBerry Lane. (Probably should be noted that the curb Heins was kicked to was cushioned with the softest gold imaginable, so don’t shed too many tears.)
And, just how bad of a job did Heins really do? Wasn’t he in charge when Research In Motion made the bold name change to BlackBerry? That alone should have been worth at least a five-year commitment from RIM … I mean BlackBerry’s board.
The going private issue is even more confounding as this plan was announced just over one month ago. What sort of company makes the bold move to go private, only to then change its mind on a month later? It’s not like they were trying to decide on whether to get donuts or bagels for the regular staff meeting here. Sure, the going private move might have been a bad idea, but shouldn’t a company with the size and scale of BlackBerry have done enough research on this move in the first place to have realized if it was a good move or not?
And, it’s not like these questions of sanity are coming only from those on the outside looking in. Heck, even Canadians are turning on their own:
And it’s not like BlackBerry hasn’t done some good things over the past year or so. Did you know that BlackBerry recently unveiled a new smartphone that packs a feature set rivaling the best that is currently available on the market? It’s true, though I knew you lost interest in what you just read as soon as you read “BlackBerry.”
Plus, the company still has a dedicated core of enterprise users that will use nothing else but BlackBerry devices and services, and more than 70 million people using its e-mail platform. With a market just yearning for a third alternative to the Google/Apple duopoly, it’s hard to fathom why BlackBerry has not been able to get a stranglehold on that claim.
My advice for BlackBerry would be to pull an Apple and dig back into its past for inspiration. Apple was floundering before it brought Steve Jobs back into the fold, and I think we can all agree that decision worked out pretty well for Apple and its shareholders.
Or even better, combine Apple’s looking to its past with T-Mobile US’ gutsy move to bring in someone not afraid of throwing around some foul language. There is nothing more awesome than an executive thinking he is on some HBO series.
BlackBerry, bring back Jim Balsillie in some sort of management/consumer facing role! Sure, he might not be the best executive when it comes to decision making, but recent BlackBerry history has shown that just about anyone would be an improvement. Plus, Balsillie talks like a hockey player.
Plus, what does BlackBerry really have to lose at this point. No one expects much from the company, and by at least making it entertaining maybe it can inject some fun back into a company that has been down way too long.
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:
–Now that some of the buzz surrounding the launch of Apple’s latest iPad models has diminished, a report from IHS showed that somehow this latest and greatest product from the device segment creator is somehow cheaper to make than the previous model. What the what!?!
How can something be a newer, and supposedly, better version of something else if it’s cheaper to make? That just does not make sense.
Then again, Apple does have a bit more coin than me, so what exactly do I know about cents or sense when it comes to money.
–New Zealand has become somewhat of a hot topic in recent weeks concerning U.S. plans to auction off spectrum in the 600 MHz band. T-Mobile US noted in a recent filing that New Zealand had recently adopted spectrum-aggregation limits for spectrum in the sub-1 GHz space, which is an initiative T-Mobile US, and others, are trying to convince domestic regulators is a good idea. A good idea mostly because T-Mobile US has virtually no low-band spectrum and larger rivals Verizon Wireless and AT&T have most of it.
AT&T countered that claim by stating that while New Zealand has indeed adopted rules that would limit the amount of low-band spectrum a carrier can control, the limits that are set will allow a single operator to garner as much as one-third of the low-band spectrum up for bid, which is a heck of a lot more than what T-Mobile US is looking to limit Verizon Wireless and AT&T at.
T-Mobile US countered that counter by stating that in its response, AT&T was now “comfortable with upfront spectrum caps for auctions,” a claim that is probably not exactly what AT&T meant, but in which T-Mobile US is claiming no take-backs.
And, here we thought New Zealand was just good for providing wool and entertainment.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at dmeyer@rcrwireless.com.
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