Thinking Like an Industry Leader

This diatribe began as a conversation on Twitter between me and James Baker about RIM’s BlackBerry naming conventions, model types and general business sense.

James felt RIM should drop to one BlackBerry and make it the BlackBerry, so when someone asks you which BlackBerry you have, you can tell them you have the one. He also thought that not only was RIM’s choice of names combined with numbers (i.e. Torch 9850) silly, but the names in general were, as well: Torch, Bold, etc…

I agree with him that the names combined with numbers thing is a bad idea. James equated it to the old Mac Performa line of the ’90s, and he’s right. Adding a number to the end of the model name is like adding “cyber” or “digital” to anything Internet related today - it’s dated.

But this all stems from a deeper issue within RIM, and even more successful companies, like Samsung, Microsoft and Sony - they’re not thinking like a leader.

The most successful technology company in the world right now is Apple. I’m not exhibiting zealotry or “fanboyism” (oh, that word) - I’m stating a fact. How did Apple, a company on the verge of bankruptcy in the mid ’90s, manage to dominate three separate markets in the span of 10 years? It wasn’t easy, but it came down to the three “Fs” these other companies seem to lack:

• Focus
• Foresight
• Follow-through

Focus

Apple’s and, more notably Steve Jobs’s, focus are legendary. “Yes,” to this. “No,” to that and the results speak for themselves. How can the second most valuable company in the world still run itself with that “garage-built” mentality? Take this passage from Sachin Agarwal’s blog post, “Apple is run like a huge startup. The key to great products is small teams”:

Apple doesn’t build large teams to work on every product they make. Instead, they hire very few, but very intelligent people who can work on different projects and move around as needed.

One day you might be working on the Remote app, and the next day you might get pulled on to another project that needs your help.

It takes a lot of focus for one company to concentrate on one product at a time. Does it backfire on occasion? Sure, take iWork.com, iWeb and iDVD as good examples of products that obviously didn’t get the time and attention necessary to bring them into Apple’s new iOS + Lion + iCloud world of computing. But think about it - why isn’t Apple nurturing those applications and services?

IWork.com will most likely be lumped into iCloud at some point, but office productivity in “the cloud” isn’t Apple’s primary business focus (yet) - that’s Microsoft’s and Google’s.

IWeb is a relic of the past thanks to Tumblr, Posterous and Wordpress. Of course people were using iWeb, but Apple didn’t see the point in supporting a small group of people when the resources being devoted to iWeb could be better used on something like iCloud or Lion.

And do I even need to explain iDVD? I think the MacBook Airs and new Mac Mini make the case pretty damn well.

RIM needs to take the same approaches to their products - learn to say “No” and focus resources where they’re needed. The PlayBook was a disaster, but it didn’t have to be had upper management actually thought like a consumer for 10 seconds. This interview with RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis explains why not only the PlayBook was terrible, but also why the marketing was so bad:

When Mike Lazaridis appeared on Dive Into Mobile, the consensus seemed to be that a lot of the tough questions that were being asked were awkwardly dodged. During the above interview, Lazaridis talks about how multicore processing is going to be RIM’s major competitive advantage, and they’ve got smartphones in their lineup coming out with this multicore, QNX OS.

Consumers don’t care about specs the way they used to. It’s not about “multicore processors” or “RAM” - buyers want an intuitive, attractive and cohesive experience similar to the one they’d find on a PC or Mac. When you buy a (non-tablet) computer, you know you’re going to have thousands of apps to choose from that will let you compose text documents, tweet, edit photos, mix audio and a variety of other things. Consumers also want that experience from their tablets.

Touting Flash isn’t a marketing strategy. Demonstrating all the great things you can do with third party apps is.

If your tablet doesn’t perform as well as others on the market and the software necessary to make it run properly is a month away (looking at you, HP), wait a month. Take the time to get it right, or risk terrible PR and losing a buying audience that’s more than happy to spend $500 on something better.

Focus also pertains to demographics. I’m not advocating the use of focus groups, but I am encouraging top brass at these companies to pay attention to what’s going on in the consumer space and how it’s affecting the enterprise. BlackBerrys dominated the business world because they were secure and relatively easy for IT departments to manage. Then the iPhone came out and office workers wanted their personal phone experiences to match their business ones. It’s easy for an IT head to tell the average office drone that he can’t have his iPhone on the company network, but it’s a lot more difficult to tell the CEO.

So, what happened? Apple started eating RIM’s nicely packed lunch - the one that came with a bottle of Sunny D and the crusts cut off the sandwich. How did RIM respond? The below quote is courtesy of PCMag.com back in January 2011:

Here’s the thing, though: RIM isn’t in a hurry. Lazaridis emphasized that RIM has a long-term plan for the next ten years, which may be why they don’t seem to feel like they’re under the gun to deliver their super-phone tomorrow. First they made RIM a global business, now they’re delivering the PlayBook, and super phones are on the to-do list, he said.

If it takes RIM 10 years to deliver the “phone of today”, we better start planning the funeral service now.

How can RIM focus and get back on track? The first hurdle is to acknowledge there’s a problem. After that, they need to understand why people are buying iPhones and Androids and, more importantly, why they want them at work. Then, the company needs to streamline the product line down to no more than two phones and really work on nailing the experience. Bring in a lead designer, an auteur - someone who can focus the team on making the next BlackBerry the best phone the company has ever released.

Specs are meaningless if no one wants to use your phone.

Most importantly, split up the co-CEOs. No team works well under two leaders, especially two leaders who fight like husband and wife all the time.

Of course, what travels alongside “focus” in the tech industry?

Foresight

Apple has it. RIM doesn’t. Samsung doesn’t. Sony doesn’t.

When Apple came out with iLife back in 2003, the whole point was to make your Mac the “hub of your digital life”. Keep your music in iTunes (and buy it from the iTunes store), store your photos in iPhoto and edit your home videos in iMovie. Ten years later, iCloud moves all of that off your Mac and into the ether so it’s available anywhere at any time. Apple saw the future of computing was not in physical storage or optical media - it was in “the cloud” (I hate that phrase).

The company also saw wires going away in favor of Bluetooth and WiFi. What’s the biggest complaint about the iPad from PC users? No USB or HDMI ports. How did Apple get around that? AirPlay using the AppleTV.

Oh, you can’t plug a mouse and keyboard into the iPad? WHY WOULD YOU WANT THAT? Just buy a MacBook Air, or settle for a cheap netbook. People buy tablets for the tablet experience, not a shoddy PC experience.

While these other companies are busy cramming dated technologies into modern hardware, Apple is moving on to grander visions. They’re not skating to where the puck will be, they’re picking up the puck and putting it where they want it and for the past 10 years, it’s been working.

If RIM wants to get back on top, it needs to see where it wants to be in the next few years (not 10) and focus on that goal. Right now, RIM, Samsung and many other companies are reacting to what Apple is doing in the marketplace. That’s a bad approach for a sustainable business. To paraphrase a horrible cliché, “Apple became the change it wanted to see in the world” and consumers embraced that change - sometimes reluctantly, but eventually.

The PlayBook’s core functionalities (email, contacts and calendar) depend on the BlackBerry Bridge service - something unavailable on AT&T when the tablet first debuted, so AT&T BlackBerry users couldn’t get their mail and personal info on their PlayBooks. Shouldn’t a big company like RIM have the foresight to make the kind of deal necessary to bring Bridge to AT&T customers on PlayBook launch day? One would think…

Follow-Through

For this last item, we turn back to Apple. The Mac consists of:

• OS X
• iLife (iTunes, GarageBand, iMovie, iPhoto)
• iCloud (this fall)
• A thriving library of third party applications
• iWork (Pages, Keynote and Numbers)
• The Mac App Store
• A thriving array of third party peripherals and accessories

iOS is made up of:

• The App Store
• iCloud (this fall)
• iWork
• iTunes, iMovie and GarageBand
• A thriving library of third party applications
• A thriving array of third party peripherals and accessories

Notice any similarities? App Stores, iCloud, iWork, third party apps and peripherals, iLife - Apple has built a cohesive ecosystem for each of its product lines.

Even Google has an entire suite of services (Gmail, GCal, GTalk, YouTube) that works on all Android phones.

What’s the difference? Apple supports its hardware and software for several years, providing timely updates to all devices simultaneously. Android updates are at the mercy of carriers and OEMs. Some devices get updates, some don’t, some don’t get them for over a year - it’s a mess.

Apple follows through on its products. It provides everything necessary to keep the hardware you invested in going for three, four, five or more years. There are still people using 12-inch PowerBooks as their daily drivers seven years after they were released because the hardware and software are that good.

Where’s that commitment from RIM or Google? Where’s the follow-through? Where’s the cohesive ecosystem? It’s not on the PlayBook:

• BlackBerry PlayBook to support BlackBerry Java and Android apps
• Native C/C++ development support added, in addition to HTML5, Flash and AIR support

Java, Android apps, C/C++, HTML5, Flash and Air. Could someone please explain to me what’s cohesive about all this? Because I don’t see it.

RIM also didn’t release its App World store until Summer 2008 - after the iPhone SDK and Developer Program were launched. That’s not commitment to the BlackBerry experience, it’s just keeping up so they don’t get left behind. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough.

Where Do We Go from Here

RIM has nowhere to go but up. However, unless it can restructure its management and shape an efficient, streamlined business around what consumers crave, the company that started the email phone revolution will go up…in smoke.