Picked up the three Toronto newspapers Monday morning; each had the front page headline about the executive changes at Research in Motion that were made public late Sunday night, (I was caught up watching the 49’ers – Giants NFC Conference overtime final that ran rather late and had taken time off from the Internet.)

It’s been some time since I wrote a post about RIM and Blackberry. In fact, the last one was about the announcement of the appointment of long-time acquaintance Alec Saunders as Vice President, Developer Relations. Alec has certainly made an impression with developers as shown on Twitter; the comment on the right showed up yesterday morning.

Yes, I caught up with Alec at CES where I was not only able to check out the Playbook OS 2.0 but also got to have a look at the Porsche equipped with QNX firmware and three Playbooks. But more importantly was how attending CES – not at the booth but in discussions as I walked around the show – reinforced my conclusions after watching RIM’s quarterly report last fall, when they announced delays of the launch of the new OS 2.0 for Playbook. At the same time I was reading the Steve Jobs bio and how he made sure that product showed up on time. I also have had a chance to check out the current Playbook – great hardware but lacking in applications that make it a “must have” to carry around. And there’s my own experience over the years not only observing technology business restructurings but also participating at a senior management level in a NASDAQ-listed company restructuring with all the associated performance pressures. The technology may change but the business management issues don’t. The bottom line was that RIM had significant internal operations problems showing up publicly as an inability to execute. It only got further reinforced by the December announcement of delays in the launch of a QNX-based Blackberry.

Here’s my viewpoint:

1. As became really obvious after announcing the delays not only of OS 2.0 for Playbook but also Blackberry phones , the number one priority for RIM is to fix the internal processes for managing execution to deadlines. Reading the Steve Jobs bio at the time of this announcement (and having had my own experience working under a “driven” CEO) brought this point home. Steve simply would not let a deadline be changed; he may have been a bit off the deep end and erratic at times but he ensured that Apple had the execution leadership and team required to meet deadlines.  The first benchmark for the “new” RIM will be the launch of OS 2.0 for Playbook in February; certainly the demos at CES looked promising. And the recent price reduction on Playbook simply became a way to seed 800,000 units in preparation for the upgrade (aside from getting this hardware off the inventory line of RIM’s balance sheet). Those 800,000 users are now positioned to provide their own feedback.
2. The second benchmark was reinforced by the new CEO’s comment made in 2005 while at Siemens about the future of smartphones: “The end user is not concerned with the technology behind the service, they’re concerned with the applications they can get.”  About the same time over six years ago Alec Saunders wrote his “Voice 2.0 Manifesto” where he emphasized that “applications are the value creators”. And I have to say that my experience with the Playbook 1.0 was underwhelming. While it possesses great hardware and there have been some interesting applications, it lacks not only the number of applications but, even more importantly, some critical applications. So my second benchmark relates to application development:
   1. We need to see some critical common applications, starting with Skype which badly needs a mobile platform that supports true multitasking and battery management. Dropbox and Kindle for the Playbook are two others that should easily be able to take full advantage of QNX’s inherent multitasking and multiprocessor functionality. Yes, you can access some of these, such as Dropbox, via a web browser but it’s not the simplest user experience. Skype would make it possible to converse with any of their over 200 million active users on any platform. In today’s communications and social networking world Skype is critical to any communications platform.
   2. We need to see an evolving base of third party applications. As Alec pointed out in his presentation at RIM’s North America developer conference last fall, RIM’s developer program for Blackberry phones has been actually the second most successful smartphone in terms of revenue generated for developers. Other developer conferences in Singapore last fall and Amsterdam next month are indicators of developer enthusiasm; certainly attendance at Singapore demonstrated significant attention in the southeast Asia market – and the Amsterdam developer conference is sold out. But there are several issues that need to be addressed to facilitate developer interest including legal ones (make the agreement short and simple) and having a sufficient tool set in a decent time frame that encourages developers to participate in new product launches. (Alec did acknowledge some of these issues at his presentation last fall.)
   3. BlackBerry App World needs significant improvements. Yes new versions have been coming out but… Having to reboot the device when installing certain new programs or upgrades does not cut the mustard. It must also be able to handle multiple upgrades on a single action. iOS certainly sets the benchmark here in terms of the user experience.
3. Thirdly  there is the expectation that there is some “Messianic” Steve Jobs out there who can solve RIM’s problems as CEO. It ain’t goin’ to happen; there was only one Steve Jobs. Recently we have seen examples at, say, Yahoo and HP, where bringing in “experienced” CEO’s has been a failure. Appointing someone with internal experience also brings along an exposure to RIM’s processes and personnel that allows more rapid implementation of internally required changes (such as execution). Tony Bates at Skype has also demonstrated that it helps to bring along a combination of both technology expertise and running high tech business operations to make things happen; again his focus has been on execution. A priority on appointing the right Chief Marketing Officer will hopefully bring in significant outside experience beyond simply marketing to a key vacuum currently existing at RIM. At the same time, let’s hope the board can recruit a couple of significant “technology company” directors from, say, Silicon Valley to contribute to the experience spectrum and strategic executive networking.
4. Then there’s one other key role for a CEO: Establishing and rebuilding key business relationships is one additional benchmark for measuring the new CEO’s success. One responsibility for any CEO is to build and maintain credibility, especially when it comes to dealing with key business partners, not only major software vendors, carriers and suppliers but also with business customers – all at a CxO level.  While they certainly built a major player in the wireless industry, with all the recent turmoil it became apparent that Mike and Jim had burned themselves out. As shown at Microsoft with Bill Gates becoming Chief Software Architect (in the years prior to his retirement), it is necessary to keep on board the founding visionary in a consultative role for at least a couple of years. Mike Lazaradis can continue to bring technology experience and vision that can benefit the company as long as he remains a reference resource and not an impact on operations.
5. Finally on the issue of break-up. It’s not an option; a breakup would destroy the company. As mentioned when the Playbook was first launched, RIM has a significant portfolio of wireless and handheld device assets. It also has services such as its network operations centres that ensure both security and minimum wireless spectrum overhead. But history shows that one needs to control the entire ecosystem to have a successful product line – need I mention Apple? On the other hand RIM’s technology, especially with QNX and its user base, opens doors for unique applications (as shown with the Porsche demonstration). It’s the integrated options available that can create the true value. The challenge here is to find the “killer” apps or set of apps that can uniquely distinguish Playbook and BlackBerry as real time communications devices and not simply a content delivery device. Thorsten explains it quite well in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cQyZKukGQ8

Bottom LIne: RIM is turning out to be an interesting business case study. Here’s a company that has over $20B in annual sales, $1.5B in cash, 75,000,000 users, no debt and so far has remained profitable. It has a major patent portfolio and unparalled wireless expertise in areas such as security and efficient data delivery. Without QNX we would not even be having this discussion and RIM would really be struggling – their old OS had outgrown its viability. In  some ways RIM is in a position most “startups” would be envious to be in.

Yet there’s the declining market share in its major market where it can only offer its current product line for another six to nine months; however, it’s still a major market leader in many other markets (U.K., Indonesia, etc.) Yet, by its new CEO’s admission it’s still got “traces of a startup”. RIM is certainly in a reboot stage but … can it re-establish itself with the combination of new market positioning, internal restructuring and a culture change to more disciplined operations? The real focus needs to be on fixing the internal operations as much as on external marketing. Unfortunately this was only buried in one CEO video from RIM whereas the media and analysts wanted to feed on sound bites about “no need to change the overall strategy”.

The only way to really measure performance of a new CEO is to set benchmarks. Presented here are five major ones that must be addressed in the next six to nine months if RIM is to succeed. As mentioned in this interview with a local Kitchener-Waterloo radio station, Thorsten needs time to demonstrate he can provide the team leadership required to pull this off.

Here’s a Financial Post story about a change that’s been in play for the past few months: Ottawa taking centre stage in RIM’s future.

(The Tweet above appeared as i was writing this paragraph. “Porter terminal” is the downtown Toronto airport; Bay St. is the Canadian equivalent of Wall Street.)

Full disclosure: My first interest is in seeing over 8,000 Canadian jobs (not to overlook all those in other countries) preserved but while meeting a market need. But this video also demonstrates the impact of RIM on the Kitchener-Waterloo community.

I have an iPad (and had an iPhone until it was lost recently – yes, I’ll replace it), a BlackBerry Torch 9800 and a Playbook. Having them all is necessary to fully understand the dynamics of the market. (I’ve had some exposure to Android devices and many acquaintances with them.) Apple’s record quarterly performance results announced yesterday certainly reinforce the need for RIM to find a unique market niche; even Tim Cook at Apple recognized that the Amazon Fire is first and foremost an e-reader and not a tablet competitor to iPad.

While in the past I have held RIM shares (since 1998) at the moment my holding is minimal.  I have never worked at RIM nor had RIM as a client. I have frequently visited Waterloo and its university for over thirty years and have attended most of their annual meetings during that time.

My only other bias probably arises from the fact that I also hold advanced degrees in Physics and Business; the combination of a physicist and experienced technology business person can be brutal when it comes to seeking success. You learn to pay attention to details, delegate, set goals and yet understand where opportunities can arise. (And I once worked for 18 months in Germany as a physicist in a business environment.)

Related articles

• Interview with Alec Saunders, VP of Developer Relations and Ecosystem Development (blogs.blackberry.com)
• QNX: RIM’s last hope? (business.financialpost.com)
• RIM CEO: QNX to Be BlackBerry’s Foundation for a Decade (phonescoop.com)
• CES 2012: RIM Pins Hopes on PlayBook 2 Software (forbes.com)

Alec checks out the original iPad while attending eComm 2010

About 20 years ago I was managing the Canadian operation of Quarterdeck, publisher of the very popular QEMM-386 memory manager for DOS. During that period Microsoft decided they needed to upgrade DOS to include some memory management features in DOS 5 and later DOS 6. Somehow the genius developer team at Quarterdeck always managed to stay a couple of versions ahead of the DOS feature set. But the experience also led me to meet Microsoft’s Canadian Product Manager for DOS, Alec Saunders. We jousted about our products but I also came to appreciate Alec as a respected player at Microsoft.

When I went to Los Angeles a year or two later to work with Quarterdeck on a corporate restructuring I needed to have meetings at Microsoft Redmond (don’t ask about the business reason – cause I forgot). I learned that Alec had moved to Redmond. One call to him ensured that I had the meetings I needed; we continued to cross paths as he moved on to become the first product manager for Internet Explorer (yes, Quarterdeck had a great browser – with tabs – but did not understand the Internet culture of beta testing), and we would always meet up at Comdex, amongst other shows.

Alec returned to Canada in 2000 where he worked with a successful Real Time Operating System company, called QNX – a company about which I had learned in the mid-80’s during my frequent trips to Ottawa. A year later he took up a business development position with a telecom equipment vendor. About four years later we met up again as he was considering the launch of a start-up that eventually became known as iotum with a conferencing product called CalliFlower. You will find many posts here about the evolution of CalliFlower. For about a year Alec hosted his daily SquawkBox conference call when a crowd of up to 20 to 30 enthusiasts would talk about IP-communications industry issues, meet several of the players as featured guests and contribute to the development of Calliflower’s feature set. During this time Alec gained experience developing applications for Facebook and the iPhone.

What I really came to appreciate is not only how well Alec understood the technology behind today’s IP-based communications and wireless technology but also about how well he understood the business and personal communications issues related to building a strong developer program for a platform. The combination of his Microsoft, QNX, Versatel and iotum start-up experience made him a frequent reference point for not only obtaining background on issues but also, often, my posts.

A few months ago I learned that Alec had commenced some consulting with RIM covering business development activities involving developer relations. I also was certainly having my own questions about how RIM was proceeding not only with their BlackBerry partners but also with the Playbook. It was pretty obvious that RIM was struggling on that front, especially when it came to developer relations. Alec could bring a lot to the table for RIM.

Towards the end of July I made a Skype call to Alec only to learn that he was on his first day on the job as Vice-President, Developer Relations for RIM. His initial focus is on the PlayBook, working with the QNX team in his home city of Ottawa (but probably now a frequent commuter to RIM Headquarters in Waterloo). Andy’s post yesterday made this public; the only previous external clues that something had changed were his occasional inquiries on Twitter and Facebook about how to use a MacBook Pro; it can now be disclosed why these queries were arising.

If RIM continues to hire experienced professionals of Alec’s caliber, it only improves RIM’s chances for success built around the QNX platform. Having been aware of QNX for over 25 years I learned that they have the most robust, crash-free operating system available – you can fly an airplane with it. It has several features that support true multitasking on multi-core processor platforms. QNX has a most compelling customer base as exemplified here. The challenge here is to leverage QNX’s key features and RIM’s historical enterprise pedigree to bring about a Playbook that takes off in directions that the iPad cannot touch. Suffice it to say there is a path to follow and it does not rely on being a direct competitor to the iPad. Is this a hint?.

Gizmodo defines Alec’s challenge here:

BlackBerry App World is like the sad broken-down amusement park your dad takes you to because when he was a kid it was the only place that had a log flume. You got behind with devs. You got beat. Get them back. Microsoft’s doing it—slowly, surely—with Windows Phone, and you can too. It’s going to take money, sure, but considering how many wasted investments you’ve been willing to make recently you might as well splurge on something useful.

You’ve got time before QNX makes its phone debut. Use that time to line up as many major devs as you can. Don’t just make BlackBerry a QWERTY storefront for Android apps. We have that already. It’s called Droid.

Bottom line: A strong developer relations program is only one critical component to RIM’s success. While Alec brings a lot to the table, RIM’s biggest challenge is to quickly build a disruptive platform that can become a market leader in its own niche.

Over the past few months there has been lots of coverage of RIM’s forthcoming BlackBerry Playbook and its potential for acceptance in the quickly emerging tablet market. The media frenzy generally perceives it as a competitor to the iPad; the initial reviews of the past week have been mixed, to say the least.

The issue with these new launches are “expectations” versus the “reality”. Even at the initial iPad launch a year ago, many disappointed reviewers were looking for a device that effectively would be a “tablet” version of a full personal computer. Some reviewers were disappointed that it had no native voice calling application; Truphone and Skype have taken care of that aspect. My own perspective at the time, after watching the announcement presentation, was that it was more an electronic briefcase, providing mobile and portable access to a user’s documents, email, photos and videos as well as to the web (sans Flash support, however).

At Christmas I received an iPad and have found it’s been a replacement for most of my newspaper reading, an alternative for watching NHL hockey games on my NHL Center Ice subscription (cable TV, PC, iPhone and iPad) and instant access to the my documents stored on the cloud through services such as Dropbox. There are many other applications that are handy to have accessible. It provides access to all my social networking services: Twitter, Facebook, foursquare and YouTube. And, of course, I can make Skype calls; however, with only the iPhone form factor, one can readily visualize there is opportunity for Skype to make better use of the tablet-size display format. Bottom line: I take it wherever I go and have ready access to all my cloud content as well as handy applications, such as the Toronto Transit app, that can assist with my road warrior activities.

Since its announcement back in October I have followed the PlayBook, starting with the announcement last October and providing some commentary at the time.

BlackBerry Playbook: Leveraging All of RIM’s Strengths into a Tablet

Later I saw the demonstration at CES 2011, recently attended a Mobile Monday Toronto presentation discussing the developer opportunities for applications and this weekend read some of the initial reviews of the past few days.

All these activities have established certain expectations. The most obvious one is that it is a competitor to the iPad. Certainly it is an alternative tablet platform and satisfies the media’s thirst for comparisons, whether valid or not. But any tablet platform that cannot distinguish itself from the iPad does not support a sustainable business model. While there is certainly some overlap, it also has its significant differentiators. In general the media are having difficulty separating the  technology from the user experience. We have yet to see real user experiences that evolve from the technology behind the platform.

Yesterday, above the fold, the Globe and Mail’s front page very visibly directs readers to the Report on Business three page spread reporting on the Playbook’s launch.

Frankly I have never seen the Globe and Mail or its Report on Business do such extended coverage of a product launch. However, as Canada’s “National” newspaper they have recognized the importance of the PlayBook’s launch as not only significant for Research in Motion but also for its potential value to Canada’s economy and high tech indutry. RIM has become Canada’s technology darling and counts over 12,000 Canadians amongst it 18,000 employees worldwide; it’s an important player in these times of a challenging economy.

The primary article: “RIM makes a play for its future” where technology reporter Omar El Akkad writes:

This is one of the most important moments in the history of Canada’s most important technology company – not because RIM needs to sell millions of PlayBooks or beat the iPad to survive (it doesn’t), but because it must prove that it has a second act.

A lot more is riding on the PlayBook’s success or failure than the trajectory of a single company. Since the slow death of Nortel Networks, RIM has moved to the centre of the Canadian technology sector. It spawns new startups or acquires them, spends a healthy proportion of its $1.3-billion research and development budget in Canada and is the largest employer of co-op students in the country. No other Canadian-controlled business offers as much opportunity for bright Canadian engineers and mathematicians to find meaningful work at home.

Coming out of the launch coverage are several significant questions:

• While BlackBerry Playbook is an obvious complement to the BlackBerry smartphones, can it serve, in its current offering, as a stand alone device for the consumer market?
• Is BlackBerry’s traditional security sufficient to maintain its significant presence in the business and government markets?
• Will WiFi as the only wireless mode on the launch version be a limitation?
• When “content is king” for the tablet market how will RIM appeal to developers to ramp up applications rapidly?
• Are there any “killer” apps coming out initially? Does it have any totally disruptive features?
• How will it leverage the dual cameras not simply for photographs and video recording but rather will we soon see any video calling applications?
• Is it really an iPad competitor or are we seeing the launch of new type of tablet-size appliance?

Media thrives on having competitive comparisons. They especially want to find the “killer” device for a product that has been an obvious hit. (Look at how many “competitors” there are to Skype in the real time communications space but none has achieved nine figure numbers of active users.)

In a follow up post I’ll address these issues and point out key strengths and weaknesses that make the PlayBook an interesting tablet market play and where I see potential new directions for this type of device.

Related articles

• BlackBerry PlayBook reviews say that it’s not an iPad killer (tuaw.com)
• Everyone’s Right: The BlackBerry Playbook Doesn’t Stand A Chance (RIMM) (businessinsider.com)
• Review: BlackBerry PlayBook strong, well-priced (sfgate.com)
• RIM CEO defends BlackBerry PlayBook tablet against meany critics (venturebeat.com)
• RIM CEO Defends BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet Against Meany Critics (nytimes.com)
• RIM: claims BlackBerry PlayBook rushed out aren’t ‘fair’ (electronista.com)
• “BlackBerry PlayBook Better Than Apple iPad at Multitasking Says Experts” and related posts (phonesreview.co.uk)
• Playbook: Maybe just right on target (calliflower.com)

Having been invited to attend a BlackBerry Torch launch event in Toronto a week ago Monday, I have now experienced RIM’s latest smartphone for about ten days. Suffice it to say, as a veteran BlackBerry user, it certainly elevates BlackBerry’s feature set to a level that is very competitive in today’s smartphone market.

So what’s new – relative to my previous Bold 9700?

• combining a touch screen display with BlackBerry’s traditional keyboard
• BlackBerry 6 operating system
• a WebKit-based web browser that delivers a state-of-the-art smartphone browsing experience
• universal search
• an accelerometer that allows operation in both portrait and landscape mode
• a 5M-pixel camera with flash
• enhanced multimedia support
• significantly enhanced social networking support

To comment on some of my experiences:

Migration from a Bold 9700 to the Torch: using the latest version of BlackBerry Desktop Manager’s “Switch Devices” feature, the entire migration process required 20 to 30 minutes, including all my installed applications. Desktop Manager 6.0 is more user friendly and has a much easier migration process than previous versions – key when you’re trying to appeal to a consumer market.

However, for many applications, such as Twitter and Social Scope it was necessary to log in again; effectively a positive security feature. The biggest challenge is organizing the applications within the various categories across which you can swipe in the main menu: “All”, “Favorites”, “Media”, “Downloads” and “Frequent”. Once organized finding an application using touch screen gestures becomes much faster.

The Touch Screen and Its Keyboard: Touch with all its gesturing effects brings a significant productivity improvement to the handling of emails, media and web browsing. All the traditional ways to use the touchpad and keyboard remain available but for the majority of applications it becomes much easier to use the touch screen as opposed to the four function keys, touchpad and traditional keyboard. For example, it is now possible to simply swipe a finger left or right to move through your Messages, including emails.

As for the Touch screen keyboard: it simply confirms that my fingers are too large for a touch keyboard – works fine for entering a few characters but I revert to the hardware keyboard for any serious typing such as longer email replies.

Bottom line is that the touch screen and hardware keyboard are significant complements to each other and bring the advantages of each where appropriate in context of the application. And, being a true multi-tasking smartphone, the touch screen has features that make application switching much easier.

Note there are a few applications that are currently not sensitive to the touch screen, the most significant being the Google Mobile suite, including GMail, Google Maps and Google Reader. Here you can continue to use the touchpad but trying any gesture on the touch screen has no effect. I’m sure Google and RIM are working on a resolution of this situation. But almost all my other applications are appropriately touch sensitive.

The Browser: Not only is the WebKit-based browser the first truly reliable browsing experience on a BlackBerry; it also brings in features such as “tabs” that make browsing a much more manageable activity. Combined with the touch screen’s gesturing, such as the two finger expansion and pinch for zooming/unzooming, BlackBerry’s OS 6 browser has become on par with my iPhone browsing experience. Actually one advantage of also having the BlackBerry’s touchpad available is that it can be used for the precision cursor location required when two or more links are very close to each other such as on the PGATour.com mobile website.

The Torch also includes an accelerometer to allow portrait and landscape mode viewing in the browser; however, if the hardware keyboard is open, only portrait mode is available. On the other hand, when viewing YouTube videos they always come up in landscape mode. One of those small but important features that contributes to the device’s user friendliness.

Overall the BlackBerry 6 browser is a much more reliable, user friendly (and satisfying) experience.

Universal Search: within BlackBerry 6 is a search facility that not only searches the web but can search the entire BlackBerry. Basically hit the search icon on the status bar, enter the search term(s) and hit return. The applications containing the search term(s) will show up; click on the application and it will take you to the search term(s). Included in the applications is an option to do a Google search. In my world there can never be too many search opportunities, whether in Outlook, Skype chat messages, Gmail on the BlackBerry or iPhone, Google on the desktop, or locating emails from a contact on my BlackBerry.

Social Media: When I arrived at the Canadian BlackBerry launch event, one of Canada’s top social media guru’s, Amber MacArthur (@ambermac), author of Power Friending, was demonstrating the Torch’s social media features. Full disclosure; through a recent series of her columns in the Globe and Mail, it was apparent Amber remains a hard core BlackBerry user. But it quickly became apparent why she was carrying out this role at the launch event. BlackBerry 6 includes a comprehensive “Social Feeds” application where you can readily view your stream of Twitter, Facebook, BlackBerry Messenger and five other IM feeds either in one stream or filtered by application. In addition swipe to the left and you can view a stream of selected RSS feeds. A very comprehensive interface that has the potential to challenge my favorite Twitter/Facebook client – Social Scope. (Social Scope, which has BlackBerry 6 compatibility, has the ability to follow individuals and specific hashtags as well.) In summary, Social Feeds is a new feature that will readily appeal to anyone managing social media.

Of course, BlackBerry Torch includes RIM’s unique social networking tool, BlackBerry Messenger, that, in its latest incarnation, provides instant PIN-to-PIN chat, photo and file transfer along voice messaging. I continue to use it when I really need to grab a contact’s attention and using other Internet messaging applications, including email, as an intermediary can not get the message across fast enough.

And finally, BlackBerry integration with applications. Many BlackBerry apps are integrated tightly with the Address Book and other primary BlackBerry apps such that, for instance, a Contact’s picture will be retrieved from FaceBook if it is not available from an Outlook Contact synchronization. From a Contact in the Address Book, one can immediately go to her/his Facebook or LinkedIn page or locate an address in Google Maps.

Bottom line: This review highlights the features that became apparent over the course of my first ten days with the BlackBerry Torch; there are many other more subtle ones. For any BlackBerry aficionado it’s a “must” upgrade that puts the BlackBerry technology performance on a par with either iPhone or Android.

RIM’s real challenge is to attract new BlackBerry adopters and recruit more application developers. Certainly the PlayBook announcement earlier this week, with its underlying QNX OS, appears to brings to the table many of the tools required to assist the latter challenge. And RIM’s continued promotion of BlackBerry Messenger, a unique application that has bailed me out on many occasions, as well as its ongoing reputation for the most mature smartphone email operation and high level of security help with the former.

Of course the final piece of the puzzle for full support of real time social networking would be that missing BlackBerry SuperApp: a carrier agnostic Skype for BlackBerry; Amber, a longtime Skype user and enthusiast who used Skype for TV reporting long before Oprah, would have loved to have been able to demonstrate it.

And why the timing for this post? BlackBerry Torch launched yesterday on five Canadian carriers: Rogers Wireless, SaskTel, Telus, Bell and Virgin Mobile

Three more announcements this week that should help these challenges:

• Press Release: Research In Motion announces BBM social platform
• Press Release: RIM launches BlackBerry Advertising Service
• Press Release: RIM to launch free BlackBerry Analytics Service

Related articles by Zemanta

• RIM’s Blackberry Torch now available in Canada – here’s the lowdown on where to get one (techvibes.com)
• Future Shop offers Canadians the highly-sought after BlackBerry Torch smartphone on September 30 (newswire.ca)
• Review: BlackBerry Torch is a hot pick, but has flaws (thestar.com)
• BlackBerry Torch 9800 Goes Live on Rogers (intomobile.com)
• BlackBerry Torch up for pre-order on Vodafone (v3.co.uk)
• BlackBerry Torch 9800 Launched on Bell and Telus (intomobile.com)
• BlackBerry: Smartphones Sans AntennaGate (voiceontheweb.biz)
• Skype and Third Party Access: Getting Back to Basics (voiceontheweb.biz)

Over the past week we have been hearing rumors about a BlackBerry tablet offering; they came true yesterday – the only surprise being the tablet’s name – with RIM’s announcement, at their Devcon 2010, of BlackBerry Playbook. Having followed RIM for over twelve years and watched the “Sneak Preview” video, BlackBerry Playbook combines both their technology strengths and market strengths to launch a new era of the “professional” tablet [RIM’s term].

So you ask, what strengths are they leveraging?

• legacy multitasking smartphone experience, combined with multiprocessing on a dual core processor
• purchase last year of QNX for its robust operating system technology and expertise
• evolution of their “touch” technology expertise over the past two years
• superb graphics displays
• release of a WebKit-compliant web browser in BlackBerry OS 6
• robust security – approved by NATO and many governments internationally, yet now challenging the security investigation agencies of many countries
• wireless data transmission efficiency
• long time evolutionary experience with push technology (and its impact on battery management), email, Blackberry Messenger and document handling
• enterprise support, including BlackBerry Enterprise Server
• legacy Java support for application development, combined with support of both Adobe Flash and HTML5
• over 450 wireless carrier relationships worldwide

(Full disclosure: for the past ten days I have been experiencing a BlackBerry Torch – and an iPhone 4; an initial BlackBerry Torch review post will follow for the Canadian launch day, September 30. However, it have given me sufficient exposure to RIM’s most recent touch, display and web browser technology to support some of the statements above.)

As one who has been involved with the sale and marketing of multitasking on PC’s for 25 years, it would seem to be a “natural” that any new tablet devices should fully support multi-tasking. Recent BlackBerry smartphones have consistently demonstrated the value of true multi-tasking (and inherently the underlying virtual machine architecture); it becomes even more apparent when using the new web browser, message management and social networking infrastructure in BlackBerry OS6.

Over those 25 years one nagging complaint has been the robustness of both the Windows and Mac OS operating systems. While they have improved significantly over the past couple of years (I actually now run a Windows 7 quad-core desktop for several days without having to reboot and have occasional “total freezing” of my MacBook Pro), neither can boast a legacy of supporting nuclear power plant operations, running Europe’s high speed trains and manipulating the robotic space arm on space shuttle missions.

RIM’s most strategic acquisition, of the many they have made over the past few years, was its purchase of QNX last April. (Again a company which I first learned about 27 years ago as a supplier of robust embedded systems software.) Fellow blogger Alec Saunders, whose resume includes a year working for QNX, has more to say about RIM’s secret weapon. And watch this CrackBerry.com video for a more complete description of all the features that QNX brings not just to the end user but also to the developer community:

So what differentiates a “professional” tablet from iPad?

• dual core 1 GHz processor, incorporating true multitasking and multiprocessing
• dual 1080p HD video cameras (front facing and on back panel)
• enterprise ready – supports the installed base of BlackBerry Enterprise server installations
• the world’s most proven robust operating system – the secret sauce running Cisco routers and probably your automobile
• works as a complement to BlackBerry smartphones – bringing productivity well beyond simply tethering
• support for HDMI-out to larger displays
• government endorsed security
• BlackBerry Messenger, now elevated to a social platform for third party applications
• a “developer’s paradise” for porting and developing applications (watch the video)

And what are the unanswered questions?

• While the collateral talks about “video conferencing” and H.264 support, will we see a real time video calling capability? (The image on the right would certainly indicate a “Yes”.)
• Will RIM and Skype finally work out a way to support a carrier agnostic, true IP-based Skype for BlackBerry conversation client? An application that would benefit significantly from RIM’s multitasking and battery management features.
• Can RIM gain sufficient developer support to have an attractive array of mobile device applications?
• Can RIM find an appropriately attractive price point? (No pricing was announced.)
• How does it fend off Android-based and other (HP) tablets entering this market?

Bottom Line: BlackBerry Playbook has raised the bar on many technology fronts. It’s definitely a different approach to providing an electronic briefcase, especially for business users. But can RIM leverage its PlayBook feature set to attract customers beyond current BlackBerry owners to expand their market share? Don’t count RIM out of the game yet by any means; it brings more legacy mobile device experience than most attempts to enter this market. 2011 is going to become the “Year of the Tablet” with several players and market approaches.

Other RIM announcements yesterday:

• Press Release: RIM launches BlackBerry Advertising Service
• Press Release: RIM to launch free BlackBerry Analytics Service
• Amazon to launch Kindle App for new BlackBerry PlayBook
• Press Release: RIM Announces New BlackBerry Enterprise Application Development Platform

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When I first saw the antenna band completely surrounding the iPhone 4 during Steve Jobs’ initial presentation, I recalled a comment made to me by RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaradis after a RIM Annual General meeting a few years ago. And I should also mention that I personally have a history of dealing with rf and associated antennae during my days working as a physicist in the Magnetic Resonance (“MR”) research and commercial space where all MR spectrometers and imaging systems are embedded with what amounts to enclosed radio stations operating in the FM radio and conventional television channel frequency ranges.

So I was skeptical about how that iPhone 4 antenna would work from the time of the initial announcement. And when fellow blogger and Twitter aficionado Luca Filigheddu took a poll earlier this week as to whether one would prefer a BlackBerry 9800 (the model that’s heavily speculated but not yet announced) or an iPhone 4 I could not resist the opportunity to  respond as shown above.

Three points:

• Mike’s comment when he saw me holding a BlackBerry 8700 a few years ago with my hand wrapped around the upper left corner was to the effect that I should avoid having my hand around that area as that is where the rf antennae are located. But it’s pretty easy to hold your BlackBerry while avoiding one corner of the device. Yesterday to check out the “Jobs test” I took up the “death grip” challenge presented by CrackBerry.com’s Kevin Michaluk and found “if I death grip my Bold 9700 the bars stay no matter what”. Seems like the rf engineering has improved going from the 8700 to 9700.
• From the rf physics point of view: Mike spent a lot of time at last year’s annual shareholders meeting (2009) talking about how RIM relies on internal basic physics research to assist in the design of BlackBerries, including an extensive discussion about their rf technology research. He is, after all, the energizer around the establishment of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics; while its researchers are free to pursue whatever research they see appropriate this investment is probably not totally altruism when it comes to understanding the physics behind wireless smartphones.
• In my fifteen years’ experience with Magnetic Resonance instrumentation, perhaps the most frustrating aspect was to get the rf engineering right. You can get there (or we would not have the high quality images we see with today’s MRI studies) but you need to understand the physics behind it and have lots of patience.

After drafting the above commentary yesterday afternoon very late Friday CrackBerry.com put out a rather strongly worded statement from RIM co-CEO’s Jim Ballsille and Mike Lazaradis:

“Apple’s attempt to draw RIM into Apple’s self-made debacle is unacceptable. Apple’s claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public’s understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple’s difficult situation. RIM is a global leader in antenna design and has been successfully designing industry-leading wireless data products with efficient and effective radio performance for over 20 years. During that time, RIM has avoided designs like the one Apple used in the iPhone 4 and instead has used innovative designs which reduce the risk for dropped calls, especially in areas of lower coverage. One thing is for certain, RIM’s customers don’t need to use a case for their BlackBerry smartphone to maintain proper connectivity. Apple clearly made certain design decisions and it should take responsibility for these decisions rather than trying to draw RIM and others into a situation that relates specifically to Apple.” [Author's bold]

Bottom line: Steve Jobs may be a marketing genius but he ain’t no rf engineer or Ph.D. physicist. It’s all coming out in the iPhone 4. But even his marketing genius is degraded when he endeavors to justify the iPhone 4’s current problem by attempting to demonstrate rf issues with competitor products. “Bumper physics” does not solve the problem; not to ignore the resulting degradation of the overall appearance. It’s time for Apple to do their own antenna research, Steve.

Once iPhone 4 is finally available in Canada I don’t know that I’ll be rushing out for any special upgrade offer Rogers may come up with. And by then, maybe we’ll be seeing some new BlackBerry models, including those that are the subject of speculation.

P.S. –“Sans” – the French expression for “without”.

Full disclosure: Both Kevin Michaluk and I are on Rogers for our wireless carrier which offers a highly reliable 3G/HSPA+ service. Is there also an AT&T infrastructure issue involved here? We’ll only find out when iPhone 4 launches in Canada July 30. For completeness, the author has been the owner of a minuscule number of RIM shares since 1998.

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The past Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday I attended my first Canadian Telecom Summit – where Canadian telecom carrier and vendor executives have an opportunity to provide an overview of their goals and directions encompassing both recent accomplishments and future plans. Overall many of the speakers succeeded; however, there are still a few telecom executives who want to preach motherhood. The audience comprised a mix of participants in the Canadian telecom ecosystem including both national  and  independent carrier management personnel, telecom business consultants, regulatory body staff, financial analysts and service providers amongst others.

Some highlights:

Building out a national broadband infrastructure (wireless and wireline). While the country can be considered “covered” with broadband and 3G wireless access, there are a multitude of private companies who have invested several billion dollars to build this infrastructure. Bell Canada, Rogers, Telus and MTS Allstream are the major carrier players but there are several regional or local private operations providing backbone to vertical or regional markets, (Atria Networks, Hydro One Telecom and Internetworking-Atlantic are some examples.)

But doing the interconnect between these players, especially at the wholesale/retail interface, is governed by CRTC regulation. A “regulatory blockbuster” forum, encompassing the heads of government relations for four major carriers and a public policy advocate, brought out several of the issues and conflicts from the participants’ perspective. Multi-billions of dollars are being spent this year to build out fiber and wireless infrastructure. Shareholders want to see return on investment; business and consumer customers simply want value for their charges independent of how the connection is routed. CRTC personnel were in the audience but there was no indication as to whether they heard anything new.

Customer Expectations: Simply put, several of the presenters focused on the customer as the primary consideration and marketing target when it comes to developing services. Lots of talk about how the user experience is changing and will change with the range of new services available via mobile data/Internet. However, execution is the challenge.

From comments by various Rogers personnel related to Net Neutrality (separate post) through to the demonstration of user-friendly interfaces that aggregate local and cloud-based personalization of a mobile device the conference covered a range of end user issues. Both the Palm Pre and Comverse demonstrations provided specific examples of how such aggregation can work to the user’s benefit. Microsoft’s “Surface” table demonstration was pretty amazing but it can only become a consumer experience with a significant price drop from the stated $12,000.

It’s about bringing broadband speeds to mobile services: One common theme across most of the presentations was the exponential growth of user demand for mobile services across the data networks. RIM co-CEO Mike Lazardis used physics as the basis of his talk about the future need for more wireless data network capacity through not only additional spectrum but also scalable applications and, based on an inherent strength of BlackBerry devices since their introduction ten years ago, effective wireless data compression to reduce bandwidth demand.

Rogers Chief Strategy Officer Mike Lee pointed out that current investment in wireless and fiber infrastructure dwarfs all other investment in Canadian ICT combined. Four outcomes that I have experienced this year as a result of these investments: launch of their 7.2 Mbps HSPA wireless service reaching 75% of the Canadian population; fiber-to-the-node installed to my neighborhood cable head, 3G service to two central Canada resort areas which I frequent and, most importantly, a robust, stable 3G service compared to my AT&T 3G roaming experience.

The disconnect: However, I also felt a major disconnect with the emerging communications opportunities being discussed at conferences such as Lee Dryburgh’s eComm Conferences and Jeff Pulver’s recently launched HD Communications Summit. Innovative applications, communications enhanced business processes and the productivity benefits of HD Voice were amongst the subjects NOT discussed at Canadian Telecom Summit. Innovative yet profitably successful services such as Voxeo and Jaduka ride over the carrier networks. Yet the Canadian Telecom Summit was an opportunity missed; it had the audience that needs to hear these stories and to build awareness of the services required to facilitate sustainable revenue streams at the carrier level.

Friend Thomas Howe, CEO of Jaduka and more commonly known as Mr. Mashup, puts it succinctly in a recent post, The Sophomore Slump, concludes with:

My suggestion is simple: instead of putting out another solo album, today’s operators need to team up with other musicians. They need push out of their current ecosystem and into others, showing how voice and communications can make other applications better.

…….

The challenge? Operators need to step back from the spotlight, and give somebody else a turn at the microphone. Operators need to admit that they are not expert at anything other than real time communication. The most rational path is for the carriers to partner with others companies that bring other talents and values to the table, [rather] than to use what operators do best to extend their partner’s offerings.

Bottom line: Canada continues to lead the world in delivering communications over a large geography but with relatively small pockets of population. But, instead of hearing oft-stated platitudes about the need for increased business communications, let’s hear about specific examples where enhanced communications applications and services can deliver true productivity enhancements to the both enterprise operations and the end user while bringing significant benefits to our social communications.

Suggested reading: Thomas Howe’s various posts on The Jaduka Exchange – a primer on new telecom services in action. Especially relevant: Unified Communications? No, CEBP.

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With both VoiceCon and Under The Radar events in the Bay Area last week, there were lots of announcements in the Voice 2.0 communications space; I wrote up some GigaOm and Web Worker Daily Posts to cover a few of them:

On Tuesday Voxbone announced the launch of their iNum Service. Basically it provides a means to have a universal worldwide “local” number that can be accessed through the recently accredited (by the ITU) +883 country code. Last Tuesday I hosted a SquawkBox conference call with Voxbone CEO Rod Ullens; a post on GigaOm with more details talks about Geography Is Dead – Thank VoIP. Two other excellent “Voxeo Talks” posts from Dan York on this topic (Voxeo is a Voxbone iNum Service Provider Partner):

• How to get an iNum – a “global phone number”
• iNum and “global phone numbers: a video interview with Voxbone CEO Rod Ullens.

A heads up on using iNum; access from Skype to a +883 number is considered a SkypeOut call requiring SkypeOut credits.It’s not a “country” covered under Skype’s Universal Calling Plans; check out the various alternative means to access iNum numbers here.

The following day iotum announced the official launch of their Calliflower conference call service incorporating premium options for businesses that see its benefits for more interactive voice conferencing through the Calliflower call portal. Document sharing and a much wider range of access points, including iNum access were amongst the new features. And they announced an iPhone application for accessing Calliflower calls. More details can be found in my Web Worker Daily Post: Calliflower: A Complete Conference Calling Service.

Finally, in doing some checking out of a new service, I encountered an Automated Attendant that wanted me to enter a person’s last name in order to locate that person in the host business’s extension directory. But that presents a bit of a problem when you have a BlackBerry QWERTY keyboard and you want to generate the tones where 2–> “A, B or C”, etc. But the RIM people think of everything; there is a relatively simple solution. Find out the answer over at Web Worker Daily in “Entering ‘Last Name’ From a BlackBerry”.

Tags: Voxbone, iNum, iotum, Calliflower, Research in Motion, BlackBerry, Dan York, Voxeo

Over the past five weeks I have had the opportunity to work with the Blackberry Bold on the Rogers network, including a week in California where I used it on AT&T’s network. While it has provided significant performance improvements over my previous 8820 and has several applications that just are not available for the iPhone, I still had the feeling I was running with late beta stage or release candidate firmware. The availability of a new firmware release over the past weekend has changed that feeling. But its U.S. release on AT&T has also been dogged by 3G network robustness issues.

Let me put some of these issues in perspective, incorporating my own experience with the Bold on both networks.

There are two major technical issues related to the Bold:

• Network robustness issues at AT&T
• Firmware issues that have possibly resulted in suspension of deliveries at Orange (and reports of inventory shortages at other carriers)

First, to cover the AT&T network robustness issues:

• as reported in RIM’s second-quarter report, 60 carriers in 29 countries have launched the Bold, including Canada, where I’ve had a Bold running on Rogers for the past five weeks. Somebody has to be getting their network right.
• several recent news reports have reported on network robustness issues as a contributor to the delayed launch on AT&T: Globe and Mail, TMCNet, CrunchGear
• a personal indicator: on a recent trip to California both my Blackberry Bold and iPhone 3G found an “EDGE” signal on AT&T more often than it found a 3G signal (in spite of setting the Bold to only operate on 3G). On the Rogers network I find the “3G” signal (in supported urban areas, such as Toronto and Montreal) more than 95 percent of the time.

I have to conclude, combining these issues, that the AT&T network robustness issues are real and serve as a threat to RIM’s ability to penetrate the U.S. market via the Bold. On the other hand the pending launch of Blackberry Storm at Verizon may become RIM’s primary route to to the U.S. market for their 3G smartphones, given Verizon’s reputation for, and experience with, 3G networks along with their extensive customer base. (Why else would several of my U.S.-based blogging colleagues attending the recent IT Expo all be running their laptops on Verizon for Internet connectivity with no complaints?)

Five weeks’ experience with the Bold tells me about its firmware:

• It delivers a significant performance improvement relative to the Blackberry 8820 I have been using for the past year. An half-VGA display with over 200 dpi resolution, 3G network speed and 624 Mhz processor speed all contribute.
• At no time has my experience to date inhibited my ability to carry on my normal mobile-supported business activities. I have had an opportunity to successfully take advantage of new applications such as editing Word documents.
• The display grows on you; when you find crystal clear small fonts or view Google Maps, you get this “how did they do this?” feeling. As indicated in other reviews, it’s stunning. And the supported resolution is a major contributor to my next point.
• The Bold is definitely a game changer. After my week of traveling to California with the Bold, I realized that I was experiencing a significant change in my mobile device work patterns. I was simply going to the Bold to keep current not only on email (using a strategic combination of both Blackberry Mail and GMail) but also on my Twitter feed, Facebook and Google Reader. I was able to not only read but also edit Word documents. I had lost the anxiety-inflamed urge to fire up my laptop PC to remain “always connected”; One non-technical acquaintance who has had a Bold since the Rogers launch in late August commented to me last weekend “I’m beginning to think my Bold is more powerful than my notebook”.
• At Mobilize 08 I met Google Maps senior product manager Steve Lee who pointed me to a new version of Google Maps for Blackberry which added Street View to the feature set available on Blackberry. While Google Maps itself is an excellent demonstration of both the Bold’s display quality and speed, turning on Street View and either moving down a street or rotating around a selected address brings into play both network and processor speeds to dynamically generate high quality images. (While this is a feature that will be included on Android, it is still not available on the iPhone.)
• Using Blackberry’s MediaSync, I can keep my music files updated by syncing with iTunes. But I also found having the trackball mouse a significant benefit when transcribing our interview with Josh Silverman via the media player; basically I was using the Bold as a Dictaphone.
• Skype chats running in iSkoot can run in background and provide notification when new chat messages appear. Also when my home office broadband was down recently for a neighborhood cable upgrade, I was able to use iSkoot to call into the daily SquawkBox conference call.
• Performance on WiFi has been excellent; walk into a registered WiFi zone and the Bold picks it up immediately. The actual registration process itself for a WiFi zone could be smoother but otherwise it works as expected.
• However, the Bold has been by no means perfect. Web pages would sometimes come up slowly; on some sites I would randomly get either the actual PC version of a page or the mobile version of the site. Sites were often stripped down to their basic content, absent of banners and sidebars. YouTube videos would stall with a “buffering” indicator appearing in the display; I was never able to view the complete video. I started to feel this was late beta stage firmware, not quite ready for “Main Street”. And then Friday reports appeared that Orange was possibly suspending Blackberry shipments due to software quality issues.

Friday evening I learned that RIM had released new firmware for Blackberry Bold on Rogers. It was described as addressing browser issues, delivering more stability and improving memory management, amongst other issues. I installed it quite seamlessly Saturday morning with the following immediate observations:

• The browser is much faster at bringing up standard web pages and renders original web pages correctly. Pages with few “feature enhancements” involving “scripts” load as rapidly as on the iPhone; pages with lots of “scripts” do take longer but are correctly and much more rapidly rendered.
• YouTube videos can now be played to the end. On some videos I encounter a momentary “buffering” delay but they always went to completion. The actual player itself could provide better video quality to achieve the superb quality I have seen on the Bold’s display when mpeg movie files are run but a user can readily follow the YouTube video action.
• After two days’ use, using the phone itself only minimally but with lots of web activity over WiFi, my battery is only down to the 40% level whereas with the earlier version I found I had to always do a daily overnight recharge.

Other issues need a few days’ use to determine if they have been addressed. But overall this upgraded Bold firmware appears to spell good news for not only Blackberry Bold but also the Blackberry Storm whose major differences involve radio bands supported, slightly larger display resolution and the type of keyboard but otherwise are based on the same underlying operating system, application and browser firmware.

The question that remains here is whether AT&T can fix their network problems in the near future or will the pending launch of Blackberry Storm become the real Blackberry 3G device launch product? For once I am quite happy to be a Rogers customer where they have spent over a year working with 3G technology prior to the Bold’s launch and the network performance is “just there”.

Bottom line: the Bold allows new user work patterns for mobile smartphones. It significantly reduces or removes the reliance on laptops to keep current with many communications activities, whether Skype Chat, Twitter Feeds or even minor document modification. Its 480 x 320 display makes it easy to read blog posts without ribbon bars. Background processing allows true multi-tasking. If you’re in a country where it is available it is worth checking out (especially once any residual firmware issues are resolved; if you’re in the U.S., it’s worth having the patience to await its release on AT&T or even the Storm’s release on Verizon.

Over the past couple of weeks, during which I have taken a vacation and then dealt with an internal network issue at my home office, there has been no holiday on news related to the IP Communications space. So this week I will offer a series of posts talking about communications from Skype’s new executive team, about building strong partnerships in an IP-based communications space, about the role of API’s and finally about our mobile-enabled world. Each of the players I reference will have a significant impact on how the world of IP-based communications and real time conversations will evolve. Let’s, however, start with Skype.

Towards the end of June, Skype announced the appointment of Scott Durchslag as Chief Operating Officer, responsible for the day-to-day execution of Skype’s offerings and programs. COO’s are usually not in themselves corporate visionaries but latch on to a vision and ensure that it can be executed to bring a “delightful user experience” while building a profitable business. RIM’s COO for Blackberry, Don Morrison, is an excellent example here¹. While RIM co-CEO Jim Balsille sets the business strategy and co-CEO Mike Lazardis builds technology strategy based on his early vision for wireless devices going back to 1992, Don is a seasoned telecom executive who is responsible for building and managing a customer-driven organization worldwide, including the distribution partnerships, carrier relationships, ISV programs and enterprise support programs that have contributed to RIM’s ongoing success. (Full disclosure, Don and I are graduates of the same business school.) RIM also has a COO for Administration and Operations, Dennis Kavelman, responsible for the operations side of RIM’s manufacturing and customer information infrastructure services. While critical to the success of RIM, neither of these COO’s is in the prime spotlight when it comes to discussions about RIM but they are mission critical to making things happen. All this to set the expectations of the role that new Skype COO, Scott Durchslag, is expected to play in ensuring that Skype executes for success.

Scott was recently interviewed by Harold Wolinsky on what message he has for current customers and what got him excited enough to want to join Skype in this role:

• The remarkable team at Skype and what they have developed to date
• The current climate where not only global warming but also rising gas prices are causing us to rethink when we have to travel and how we communicate with both our friends and our business colleagues
• The paradigm shift in communications from hardware to software. “Software owns the future in communications”. (Thus, my forthcoming post about the API discussions raging on the blogosphere.)
• The untapped revenue potential where Skype currently is running at a (profitable) $500 million annual run rate in a multi-trillion dollar market space.

His message for the developer community (in an era where both Apple and RIM have set new, but different, business models for delivering third party applications to the consumer and enterprise respectively):

If there is one thing I have learned about developers from my experience in mobile, it’s that they are at the absolute cutting edge of what can be done. Some of things we never think of are invented by some young developer trying to create cool things for himself and his friends. You really want to be able to make it as easy as possible and as economically rewarding as possible for those folks to be innovating around your product.

The interview goes on to discuss his message for Skype employees and where Skype goes next. Read it for the details.

At this point, Scott’s challenge amounts to demonstrating execution — not only through innovation in software but also in structuring and executing on compelling partner programs that drive third party innovation as well as delivering more effective support programs that “delight the user”. But the most crying need is to create broader market awareness of the potential for IP-based communications through integrating the rollout of the innovative software technology with more effective marketing practices. Communicating effectively to Skype’s user base and target audience along with rebuilding once again the viral enthusiasm that lead to Skype’s initial market acceptance and deployment have to be the key goals here. Individually each of these goals is a challenge but also Scott will be measured by how well he can coordinate these activities such that Skype breaks down the disconnects that have occurred in the past between engineering, marketing and business development. Scott may have had success at Motorola with the RAZR (but where Motorola did not invest in future development); the question today is can he bring his experience at Motorola and elsewhere to build Skype’s ongoing, sustainable success?

And the bottom line for both Josh and Skype will be whether they can build enough value into Skype over the next twelve to eighteen months to either make Skype either a major profitable eBay business unit or an attractive acquisition by a third party at a reasonable profit relative to eBay’s past investments in Skype.

¹RIM Executive Team Bios

I’ll be iBold enough to say that, applying physics terminology so much appreciated by RIM’s co-CEO, Blackberry Bold will reduce the half-life of the iPhone in the business and prosumer market by an order of magnitude.

Tuesday evening I attended RIM’s annual shareholders meeting in Waterloo at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, initially funded by RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaradis. A full house in the lecture theatre, including many RIM managers, all the Waterloo Region residents who had invested in RIM and the usual assortment of analysts and media. Full disclosure; this was my eleventh RIM AGM – the last ten as a shareholder of a minute quantity. More importantly RIM has become one of the most highly capitalized companies in Canada, competing with the Royal Bank for highest market capitalization on the Toronto Stock Exchange. RIM is to the Canadian technology scene what Nokia is to Finland and Skype to Estonia. From numbers heard at the AGM about 7,000 of their close to 10,000 employees are Canadians.

I attend each of these meetings, not simply to catch up with some acquaintances who participate, but mainly to listen to co-CEO Mike Lazaradis’ overview of the RIM’s technology and platform development. He has a way to articulate the technology within the framework of the the end user experience, developer program requirements, five nines availability, battery life, carrier benefits and other factors that have lead to their success. Coming out of the presentation, which largely focused on the forthcoming Blackberry Bold, I learned about:

• the Bold’s high-resolution (HVGA 480 x 320) display with a widescreen format and integrated lens technology.
• the new Blackberry browser (yes, you can flick your thumb to zoom without leaving thumb oil on the display cover)
• a new Clock application, complete with “bedside” mode; the picture to the right only gives a hint of what’s in store here.
• Blackberry Unite! allowing families, “friend groups”, and workgroups to communicate and share in many ways beyond voice and text via their Blackberries and desktops
• Blackberry Bold’s true GPS (that works with navigation software) but most importantly not only supports A-GPS to faciliate in-building location but also offers “Fast GPS Fix Times” – traditionally an issue with most GPS-based navigation devices.
• the extent of the Blackberry Enterprise platform that includes not only desktop (email/PIM) activities but also voice systems that allow your Blackberry to become simply an extension of the enterprise phone system, intranet web services involving SAP, Oracle IBM Websphere and all the current web services platforms and protocols and, finally, integration with real time enterprise collaboration services such as Lotus Sametime and MS Live Communication Server.
• Blackberry’s security validations with NATO and several national governments
• Blackberry Partners Fund to finance third party software development partners.
• The extent of Blackberry’s Developer programs with both prosumer general use offerings (via, say, Handango) and vertical enterprise applications.
• On the personal entertainment side, Blackberry’s new Media Sync creates a direct connection between your iTunes music collection and the Blackberry. (and will also be made available to all Blackberry devices with a media card – Pearl, Curve, 88xx – through both a firmware and desktop software upgrade).

In response to one question about why RIM will continue to prosper, Mike explained how RIM now has many years of experience in dealing with the laws of physics related to understanding both the mobile and wireless environment in which they have to operate. Wireless spectrum management, rf transmit/receive technology (across 7 bands in the Blackberry Bold), an operating system optimized for wireless data devices, data management that optimizes compression while minimizing packets transported over the wireless connections with no information loss are amongst the issues that RIM understands most succinctly. It’s what has allowed them to be able to provide longer battery life, increase the rf range and provide the overall reliability required to satisfy a broader range of, especially enterprise customer, needs. Not only are the end user needs considered but also carriers have demands on minimizing bandwidth while providing quality voice and reliable data exchange. Nobody need look to any outsource supplier for key rf and chip technology information beyond the various Intel processors incorporated into the Blackberry; most of the rest is all built in-house. It is this “legacy” experience in dealing with these laws of physics that gives RIM a significant lead in its ability to offer compelling new devices such as the Blackberry Bold and to keep open a window of opportunity for unique new applications and user needs.

Following the meeting a RIM employee demonstrated to me a couple of the Bold’s features. Better at this point to reference a comment made by Boy Genius in his recent pre-release review of Blackberry Bold:

We said this before, but this really is the screen to beat. It might be a little too “contrasty” at times, if you know what we mean, but overall, it steals the show. It is the most vibrant, color-rich, sharp screen we’ve ever seen on a mobile device.

To which I can only say, Amen! An astonishingly stunning HVGA (480 x320) display approaching 200 dpi resolution. I watched a Star Wars action segment and an auto racing clip. You really have to see it to understand how impressive its HD video quality is. But then I saw how this display’s features were applied to Office documents. A complaint about previous Blackberries has been the lack of an ability to display email attachments. The Blackberry Bold not only has the capability to display Office document attachments but does it in a manner that blows away any previous “mininalist” experience with, say, spreadsheets on handhelds. You can actually do some reasonably significant spreadsheet activity on it. Having seen this I could only react by saying that this is one key feature that will sustain Blackberry’s lead in the business and prosumer markets. Apparently there is also a way to manage the display of Power Point presentations onto an overhead projector (details unknown).

And to check out one more aspect of the Blackberry ecosystem: determine what applications were available for my current Blackberry 8820, I went to Handango and selected my model.

Between the unpublicized infrastructure mentioned above for supporting the wireless-enabled enterprise and the features I saw Tuesday evening, I can only say that Blackberry Bold will significantly disrupt Apple’s efforts to enter the business market. The iPhone is left with two markets: younger generation consumers who want an expensive toy and Mac afficiandos who can use the iPhone as an extension of their Mac experience.

• Crackberry.com lists the Bold’s features and specifications.
• Crackberry.com’s reviews of Blackberry Bold.
• In a related story about carrier data plans: Score One for the Blogosphere – Immense PR Turmoil – Rogers Caves. Did prospective iPhone users raise such a fuss because the iPhone is not as efficient at handling wireless data?

Tags: Research in Motion, RIM, Blackberry, Blackberry Bold, iPhone, Mike Lazaradis, Handango, Crackberry.com, Perimeter Institute, Blackberry Unite!

Or maybe this should be called: Steve Jobs Does Not Tolerate even the Contemplation of Failure.

Last week I reported on Rogers’ announcement of new data plans for both the forthcoming iPhone (available in two days) and RIM’s Blackberry. In fact, I had immediately changed my Blackberry plan to a new one where the price per MB had gone down by 96%.

But the blogger and Internet response to the announcements re the iPhone turned into a huge PR fiasco for Rogers. Almost 60,000 signed an online petition; reaction on the Internet through blog posts and comments demonstrated that Apple has a huge fan base that wants to remain loyal to Apple but would not tolerate being overcharged. Rumors had Apple diverting Canadian-designated iPhone shipments to other countries in response to Rogers’ pricing. The story garnered five minute bytes on evening national newscasts on all three Canadian television networks. Comparisons with AT&T and T-Mobile plans demonstrated that either Rogers did not have sufficient infrastructure, including backhaul, to support unlimited data plans or they were simply overcharging due to their GSM monopoly situation in Canada. It became an international story with CNN amongst others covering it.

Mark Evans and I (see link above) both predicted these plans would not garner the sales volumes that Apple was expecting.

Today Rogers announced that, until August 30, any smartphone, including Blackberries on BIS, on the 3G network will be able to get a $30 per month data plan covering 6GB of data until August 31. As predicted last fall, I knew the RIM people had to be onto Rogers as soon as they announced this plan for the iPhone. Now Rogers has to address the inequity of the situation where Blackberries on BES (read “corporate accounts”) are still being charged $60 for 25MB. (When I started this post, the new data plan was only for the iPhone. Talk about “Breaking News”.)

Thanks to the leadership of Steve Jobs at Apple and Jim Balsille at RIM, along with the very passionate Canadian Apple and Blackberry fan base, for demonstrating that it is possible for the smartphone vendors to call the shots. Even in monopoly situations, carriers have limits as to how much the public will tolerate the abuse of a public trust — in this case licenses for wireless communications. Obviously ARPU went out the door in favor of customer recruitment. (Were bonus plans renegotiated at Rogers?) Let’s see if the same happens in Mexico and New Zealand where again, there are some very exorbitant plans offered for the iPhone.

And, in closing, let the real Canadian Smartphone Games begin!

Reaction at Crackberry.com; Rogers initial press release today

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With RIM’s annual WES event starting later today we started to see announcements Monday about a new Blackberry and a new VC fund for mobile applications.

Blackberry Bold is definitely a major smartphone enhancement from the current Pearl, Curve and, most notably, 88×0 lines. Reading through the new specs, the Blackberry Bold addresses several issues that have been of concern in the past:

• triband 3G support extends support to GPRS/EDGE/HDSPA networks
• “push button” WiFI setup to readily access “protected” WiFi access points
• significantly improved multimedia support – overall (streaming) video performance, iTunes synchronization, new media player, improved display
• and, while they’re still working on it prior to the Blackberry Bold’s summer release, a new web browser.

Amongst the new specs:

• faster processor (@ 624 MHz, the fastest Blackberry)
• 128MB internal Flash memory but also 1GB on-board storage memory
  • expandable to 16GB via MicroSD/SDHC slot
• 2 megapixel camera
• GPS with Blackberry Maps
• Blackberry MediaSync to transfer media from iTunes
• half-VGA “ultra-bright” display (480 x 320)
• higher capacity battery:

Of particular note; it maintains the traditional QWERTY keyboard with ergonomic improvements – a key Blackberry defining feature relative to iPhone — and is its “trackball ergonomics” their response to iPhone’s touch screen?

With its newly enhanced, high performance browser and high-resolution, ultra-bright display, the BlackBerry Bold smartphone gives users an on-the-go web browsing experience with desktop-style depiction. The trackball mimics a mouse, making it easy to navigate sites in “Page View” or “Column View” or to zoom in on specific parts of a web page, while various emulation settings allow users to choose between the full desktop-style HTML content and layout or the mobile version. Attachments can also now be downloaded from within the browser and there is support for watching streaming videos (RTSP – real-time streaming protocol).

While the official press release talks about it as a “business” smartphone, Crackberry.com reports from the WES preview day:

Target Market? There’s been a lot of talk about the target market for the 9000/BlackBerry Bold. The basic confusion to date is that it looks a bit “enterprisey”, but has a camera built-in which historically screams consumer device. What it comes down to is that RIM didn’t have an enterprise/consumer target in mind with the BlackBerry Bold. The real goal here was to build a high-end device that was the ultimate BlackBerry to date… the BlackBerry on Juice (err..Steroids)… putting WiFi/GPS/3G into one unit with a Speeeedy Processor and some More Memory. So there’s no target market per se, but there is an Appeal…and the BlackBerry Bold is going to Appeal to BOTH Enterprise and Consumers. It’ll appeal to the Business Executive and it will appeal to us Gadgetholics who just HAVE to have the best device on the market.

In addition it appears that iPhone is not the only smartphone getting VC funding support for applications. Yesterday RBC Financial, Thomson Reuters and RIM announced the Blackberry Partners Fund – $150 million “to invest in mobile applications and services for the BlackBerry® platform and other mobile platforms”. Toronto’s JLA Ventures, who have been involved in startups for over ten years, is a co-manager of the fund along with RBC Financial. Long time personal acquaintance Rick Segal of JLA talks about the fund and JLA’s role; also Rick is interviewed by VentureBeat. Rick emphasizes that mobile applications only make business sense if they run on multiple mobile platforms, including Blackberry, and that only JLA and RBC Financial will make the funding decisions with no role for RIM.

Looking forward to using iSkoot and IM+ for Skype on the Blackberry Bold. While the Blackberry Bold represents advances in device resource issues, there are still the carrier issues of network capacity, mobile VoIP call quality and unlimited data plan availability to be addressed before we see a reliable mobile VoIP client running on a smartphone.

Tags: RIM, Blackberry, Blackberry Bold, Blackberry Partners Fund, Rick Segal, JLA Ventures, RBC Financial, iSkoot, IM+ for Skype

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Over the past couple of years, there have been lots of requests, rumors, speculation, etc. about why Skype needs a client for the Symbian platform, for which Nokia is the primary device vendor. Through Andy Abramson’s Nokia Blogger Program I have been able to evaluate several Nokia N Series phones including the Nokia N80i which supports both GSM/EDGE/UMTS and WiFi (and, on which, I have used the Truphone service over WiFi).

Alec Saunders recently pointed to a Business Week report on 2006 smartphone sales which states:

During the year, Nokia remained top converged device vendor with market share of 48 per cent and 38 million devices shipped, despite underperforming in North America and the enterprise market, which the company hopes to counter with a number of fresh devices which debuted earlier this year.

The report goes on to state that RIM was [a distant] number two at 7.5 million while Motorola rose to number 3 with its new Windows Mobile devices at 4.9 million.

Recall the primary issues with Skype on any 2.xG GSM platform are (i) the (unacceptable) inherent latency of VoIP on a 2.xG service and (ii) the economics of current data plan pricing, especially in North America. (And we are not going to see the level of carrier support for WiFi networks in North America that is being witnessed in Europe and Asia in any near future scenario.) The only offering currently available to wireless customers at this point is 3 Group’s X-Series service where there is a Skype client for Nokia’s N73 and the subscriber plan allows unlimited usage.

Going forward start with Stowe Boyd’s statement in his presentation at eTel earlier this week:

In the second half he begins by saying that the buddy list is the center of the new universe. Social networks are key — the individual is the new group, and the value is not in the number of people in the network, but rather the number of connections. Bingo! It’s the same logic Google uses to rank web pages. More links equate to more authority.

With over 170 million accounts, one could say Skype has a lot of “authority”. So here is my suggestion for a roadmap for both Nokia and Blackberry platforms:

1. Develop a Skype client that simply centers around IM but does not include voice.
   • It allows you to keep in touch with your Skype “buddies”.
   • Default to the underlying phone service for actual voice calls.
   • Low bandwidth but actually helps drive up usage (and, maybe, ARPU).
2. When 3G networks become more readily available (especially in North America), develop a Skype client that has all the standard Skype features.
   • This could require working with the carriers to offer an unlimited usage plan but needs other competitive factors, such as other services that need significant data transfer volumes, to accelerate the process.

With 48% market share worldwide and 3 million devices, the demand for a Skype for Symbian solution becomes ever stronger, even if it initially only uses Skype’s IM capabilities.

Taking back control of your real time communications in the AlwaysOn world.

(While this post was published originally  inFebruary 2007, it still has even more relevance in a very active Social Networking world; see the Update note at the end of the post).

When reporting on my visit last summer to an Alexander Graham Bell museum near his summer home, I discovered an interesting facet to his lifestyle:

In all his homes he had a separate office/laboratory room where he could be a night owl geek writing, experimenting and thinking. But he never had a telephone installed in any of his offices/labs.

Dr. Bell did not want his experimentation activities interrupted during his time in his home offices. Local folklore (I live less than an hour from RIM’s headquarters) has it that when Jim Balsillie, CEO of Blackberry manufacturer Research In Motion, enters his home, his family has asked him to leave his Blackberry at the door. And for years we have been searching for solutions to the dinner-time interruptions of those persistent telemarketers. In the Skype world we have those who seem to think a simple “Hi” in a chat window is sufficient introduction to start a conversation with a total stranger from the other side of the world. The potential for interruptions has become prolific with the introduction of each new technology and/or service, especially those that are “AlwaysOn”. In turn these AlwaysOn services expose us, as users, to being “Always Available”.

Yet we build our lives around communication with friends, lifestyle service providers and business colleagues who need to communicate at an appropriate time and in an appropriate manner. In today’s AlwaysOn world, made possible through both broadband Internet connectivity and mobile phones, there has arisen a crying need to manage our interruptions based on our interpersonal relationships and the real time context of our current activities. We want to ensure our communications efforts and time are spent more effectively with friends and family and spent more productively with the lifestyle service providers, business colleagues and clientele with whom we need to converse to carry on both our personal life and business activities. But such a demand requires a more intelligent algorithm for providing presence and availability information.

Over the past few weeks I have had the opportunity to evaluate many real time communications modes on new platforms such as the Blackberry 8700, Nokia N80i (selected since it runs on both WiFi and all four GSM bands) and a couple of models of the newly released “PC-Free” Skype phones. As a result I have had the opportunity to experience many modes of interruption of my activities and many modes of generating interruptions of my Contacts’ activities. They all have an element of providing basic presence information prior to making a phone call and, in some cases, also provide an ability to Chat through an IM client. And through these devices we also have new modes of real time communication: SMS messaging, email, and, with the arrival of embedded GPS, location-based services. More AlwaysOn services that simply increase the potential to be “Always Available”.

• While at CES, I used Blackberry Messenger to communicate directly (PIN to PIN) with key business contacts as I toured the exhibition floor and as we approached the time for key meetings. This “direct” channel was instantaneous and improved our “conference” productivity in a very crowded and noisy environment where voice communications was not only relatively expensive but also almost physically impossible due to background noise. Through its “Open Conversation” mode, one has an element of presence (Available/Not Available//Online/Offline) of user-designated remote contacts.
• Truphone on the N80i allows me to make calls from any WiFi hotspot (provided I have or can readily obtain authentication) but has no ability to tell me if my remote contact is readily available for a real time conversation.
• Fring (also on the Nokia N80i) provides both traditional presence and chat capability with my Skype, Gmail and/or MSN Messenger contacts but its “fringing ringing” with every chat session entry becomes overbearing and very annoying, especially once when I was in five concurrent chat sessions.
• “PC-Free” Skype phones provide Skype’s basic presence but no chat capability. So one cannot invoke the standard VoIM protocol of texting a Contact to enquire if s/he is available to take a Skype call.
• My Blackberry email messages are restricted, via a web-based service from my Service Provider, such that only those email addresses I have designated will find their emails forwarded from my legacy email to my Blackberry.
• Over the past several weeks I have been participating in the technology preview of iotum’s Talk-Now for Blackberry.This testing has provided plenty of opportunity to think about (i) when I want to be interrupted for a real time conversation and (ii) when I want simply to to be able to access presence or availability information in the context of not only my Contacts’ current “status” but also his/her current work activity and even previous communications activity.

Concurrent with managing interruptions I also need the intelligence to manage multiple phone connections (and, potentially, multiple IM connections). For instance,

• “PC-Free” Skype phones potentially put the user in the position of effectively having two phones, especially if one wants to continue to use Skype for business via a legacy PC Skype interface but the “PC-Free” phone is to be used in conjunction with, say, a home phone line. This creates the need to sign up for an additional Skype account for the “PC Free” phone. (More in a separate post.)
• My Fring installation is on a separate device which is the only one that supports both WiFi and GSM connectivity.

Bottom line is that I want to manage my availability for real time communications taking into account:

• Whom I want to be interrupted by in real time? whether the communications mode is chat, voice, SMS, video calls, etc.
• How do I triage my incoming calls to determine if I need to answer immediately or should wait until time permits a callback.
• What is the context of the interruption? Am I in a meeting? Is the caller someone whom I will be meeting later in the day and may want to discuss arrangements for that meeting?
• What is the relationship between me and the Contact? Is s/he a customer, a work colleague, a friend or a family member?
• What hours am I available for business activities? for personal activities?
• What is the context of the Contact’s current situation? Is s/he occupied by a meeting or willing to accept business calls at this time? What are her/his personal/business hours?
• How do we avoid voice mail tag? A recent study of calls placed at CAP Gemini showed that 82% of all calls end up in voice mail and it takes 3.15 attempts to make a voice connection.
• How do I ensure that I don’t miss either business or personal opportunities through ad hoc calls?
• How do I want to be notified of an interruption: a loud ringing phone? a silent vibrating phone?, a ring tone in my Bluetooth headset?
• What is important enough in context to trigger a notification (and therefore an interruption)?
• On what device (or service) do I want to be interrupted at any given point in time and physical location?
• How can my real time communications activity make my day more productive?

What are the implications for the developers and providers of new services?

• While the ability to open the same Skype account on several platforms can be convenient, it raises issues of currency of presence information on any device, including which platform should be considered the “primary” platform for, say, chat messages? How does one keep all the open clients in sync, especially with respect to presence information?
• How can I share my real time availability information with my critical business colleagues to ensure ad hoc access while reducing voice mail’s “running interference” and/or inappropriate interruptions?
• How does a service provide maximum end user flexibility with respect to issues such notification method, desired device at the time, hour of the day, designating Contacts’ relationships, etc.
• How can a service maintain an element of personal privacy in this era where identity theft and aberrant personal exposure can change your life forever?
• How does a service prejudice my interruption management towards those whom the user really wants to communicate with, yet not miss personal and business opportunities that arise from new introductions?

At this point in time there is no single answer. But through technology preview platforms such as Talk-Now, Fring, Truphone and new types of products, such as the “PC-Free” embedded Skype phones, we are getting a chance to experience in practice when, where and how we want to be interrupted. Hopefully these experiences will build the etiquette and protocols for implementing what Alec Saunders at iotum has labeled “New Presence” – delivering intelligent availability in a real time context to facilitate ad hoc interpersonal communications.

Bottom line: I want to be able to participate in the conversations essential to my lifestyle and my business operations – when, where and how I choose. And the service(s) of choice will only rise above the noise (and become a revenue generator) when I can take back control of my life – through a focus on restoring my privacy and my prejudices to my communications activity.

Update April 12, 2011: While iotum’s Talk Now service has gone away and iotum now offers their CallifFlower Conferencing service, the concepts of this Interruption Manifesto actually apply more deeply given all the approaches available in a Social Networking world.