How pathetic is RIM? Two years ago, the Blackberry accounted for almost 50 percent of the US market for smart phones. Today, it controls just 9 percent. This past year, RIM introduced a tablet device that didn’t even have an email application. It’s sold so poorly that the company took a $485 million write-down to account for a $300 price reduction this quarter. Oh, and they still haven’t updated it to add an email application. Seriously. This year, RIM was going to consolidate its future OS strategy around QNX. Which it renamed to BBX … without even checking to find out whether that name was being used. Which it was. By a smart phone software development company. Which immediately sued them. And won. RIM has introduced almost 40 new smart phone models since Apple released the first iPhone about 4 years ago, and even Blackberry experts have a hard time figuring out the differences, since the model numbers are ridiculous (quick: What’s the difference between a BlackBerry Torch 9850 and 9860?) and there are too many kinds of phones (touch screens, hardware keyboard, touch screens and hardware keyboard, sliders, and more, oh my). RIM stands as a warning for any tech industry Goliath that once owned a market only to watch it get snatched away by smaller, faster moving rivals with better products and better strategies. This is a fate that could befall any company—Microsoft, Apple, Google, whatever. Though I have a hard time imagining any of them being as poorly run as is RIM.
— http://www.winsupersite.com/blog/supersite-blog-39/mobile-computing-devices/rip-rim-141656
