Google buying RIM?

D

Delboy

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Just arrived in Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress and there is a lot of speculation about Google buying RIM. They could probably get it dirt cheap.

At least RIM will get a proper OS and App store and perhaps Google will put them out of their misery, but is there anything Google would gain from buying them?

They are a couple of years behing other device manufacturers - I know I have a one :-) and i bet the first thing Google would do is flush their OS. I dont see a fit at all.

My only concern would be the canadian jobs that will be lost
 
Delboy said:
Just arrived in Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress and there is a lot of speculation about Google buying RIM. They could probably get it dirt cheap.

At least RIM will get a proper OS and App store and perhaps Google will put them out of their misery, but is there anything Google would gain from buying them?

They are a couple of years behing other device manufacturers - I know I have a one :-) and i bet the first thing Google would do is flush their OS. I dont see a fit at all.

My only concern would be the canadian jobs that will be lost
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There were rumours back in the summer of '11 about this, but Google went out and bought Motorola instead. More recently, it was Amazon...not sure if there's any truth behind these lingering rumours, and certainly the new head honcho at RIM isn't talking mergers/sales in his talks with investors.

Truth be told, don't really see the fit - Google is years ahead of Blackberry now with regards to Android and its varying flavours...does RIM truly have anything to offer someone who already is dominating the space (i.e. I could see the Amazon angle of wanting to get into the game)?
 
dr_sarcasm said:
There were rumours back in the summer of '11 about this, but Google went out and bought Motorola instead. More recently, it was Amazon...not sure if there's any truth behind these lingering rumours, and certainly the new head honcho at RIM isn't talking mergers/sales in his talks with investors.

Truth be told, don't really see the fit - Google is years ahead of Blackberry now with regards to Android and its varying flavours...does RIM truly have anything to offer someone who already is dominating the space (i.e. I could see the Amazon angle of wanting to get into the game)?
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Ask almost any IT person that manages company phones and they will tell you that iPhone is WAAAAY behind RIM when it comes to security, encryption algorithms, etc. I imagine Android is largely the same. RIM employs a lot of smart people and have a lot of good tech, they just have no idea how to combine all of this into solid, marketable, money making products.
 
Roasted said:
Ask almost any IT person that manages company phones and they will tell you that iPhone is WAAAAY behind RIM when it comes to security, encryption algorithms, etc. I imagine Android is largely the same. RIM employs a lot of smart people and have a lot of good tech, they just have no idea how to combine all of this into solid, marketable, money making products.
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Im not in IT, so I cant speak to the security advantages RIM may have. I can say that in the past, data security was the one thing that tied end users dealing with highly confidential information (i.e. legal / banking / investment management sector) to RIM. This is no longer the case. While BB's are still the standard issue device to our employees, we now support iphones etc on our corporate networks. This is the same thing thats happening all over bay st, RIM's traditional stronghold.
 
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I am not in IT but an avaid business user. For business use, RIM BB/ Enterprise server cannot be beat. I have very little use for aps, access to e-mail and my calendar are still the primary use for my business life so BB is still the best device for being connected to the office. The Playbook now enables much better viewing on our intranet and applications. Our company is also starting to allow some aspects (e-mail) to be pushed to other devices but most management are still opting for the BB so far.
 
For the record, I'm a developer and not really in IT either but this is just what I heard from a couple guys that have managed BB Enterprise servers. Plus, think back to some of the controversy with BlackBerry's and the Chinese government since the encryption is so damn good, the government is unable to snoop on people's texts and emails. WIth that said, I gave up on RIM too and now have an android phone since I use the phone for personal use and they have fallen waaaay behind in user interface and general hardware.
 
Well Im in IT for what its worth and RIM's biggest success was in security/encryption, bandwidth efficiency and focusing on the real functional guts like central management with BB Server. Unfortunately, in the last year or so that has also been their biggest mistake because they overestimated how important that was to the average joe who really just cares about a slick piece of hardware, cool UI and flashy apps. Apple/Android have taken over the consumer market and its slowly seeping into the enterprise world but there are many that will probably continue to support RIM for as long as they are around as the infrastructure is already there and has been invested in and there is nothing wrong with blackberry devices or the way they are managed.. Plus RIM is releasing Mobile Fusion which allows you to also manage Android/Apple devices as well alongside BBs.

RIM just needs to hurry it up with releasing their next phone with BB10 and they should be fine.

As far as the speculation on google buying them... I can't see that happening given everything that is going on with RIM... If the speculation held any water, RIM's shareprice would of popped by now.
 
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^ Agreed. That and you also mentioned bandwidth efficiency. In this day and age of 3G and faster speeds, 5 Gig a month plans, etc. that doesn't seem to matter anymore and the compression/decompression actually makes things slower. It did though back when the typical "data" plan from a cell phone service provider was something like 10mb/month. This was only like 5 years ago!
 
The other issue RIM has when tying everything to a single pipeline is that when it goes down so do all the users around the world like what happened last year.
 
mma01 said:
Im not in IT, so I cant speak to the security advantages RIM may have. I can say that in the past, data security was the one thing that tied end users dealing with highly confidential information (i.e. legal / banking / investment management sector) to RIM. This is no longer the case. While BB's are still the standard issue device to our employees, we now support iphones etc on our corporate networks. This is the same thing thats happening all over bay st, RIM's traditional stronghold.
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Supporting and how secure the device is, are two very different things.

I spoke the other day to a guy who manages IT dep. with a pretty large hospital in Toronto. So, the doctors understandably might have a pretty data sensitive stuff on the devices. Obviously security is his concern. He said he would never allow iPhones on his site, just for one simple reason (there's many more). If you loose iPhone you are screwed. There's nothing, nothing you can do to protect the content on the device. With BB's he can wipe out any content within minutes of knowing ..... that simple fact would be enough for me and it is mind boggling that Apple is not capable of doing something similar. They won't even help people who prove themselves as owners who lost a device, so it's not that surprising that Apple is not capable to match the BB's security on larger corporate scale.

Would it matter to me, if I lost my private iPhone, no of course not. The few photos, whatever .... but if I could potentially get sued if someone gets access to the bits in my iPhone, I am sure I'd grabbing BB. Support <> secure.
 
mxs said:
Supporting and how secure the device is, are two very different things.

I spoke the other day to a guy who manages IT dep. with a pretty large hospital in Toronto. So, the doctors understandably might have a pretty data sensitive stuff on the devices. Obviously security is his concern. He said he would never allow iPhones on his site, just for one simple reason (there's many more). If you loose iPhone you are screwed. There's nothing, nothing you can do to protect the content on the device. With BB's he can wipe out any content within minutes of knowing ..... that simple fact would be enough for me and it is mind boggling that Apple is not capable of doing something similar. They won't even help people who prove themselves as owners who lost a device, so it's not that surprising that Apple is not capable to match the BB's security on larger corporate scale.

Would it matter to me, if I lost my private iPhone, no of course not. The few photos, whatever .... but if I could potentially get sued if someone gets access to the bits in my iPhone, I am sure I'd grabbing BB. Support <> secure.
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That may be true, but I know Osler now allows iphones (Mine still does not). So even biglaw is shifting away from BB only.
 
mxs said:
There's nothing, nothing you can do to protect the content on the device. With BB's he can wipe out any content within minutes of knowing ..... that simple fact would be enough for me and it is mind boggling that Apple is not capable of doing something similar.
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I don't know if you still can but through the mobile me service you could remotely wipe and track your iPhone.
 
I can't imagine there are many IT Managers/System Architect types campaigning for iPhones to replace current issue BB's. The people who want to swtich over are some of the people that those phones get issued to - the end users. They just want a new toy or to show up at external business meetings with all the latest tech in an effort to keep up with the Joneses. They whine and complain endlessly. Yet, they really can't make a case for why an iPhone would be better for business purposes than a BB. iTunes? Apps?? Nope - any large company with IT policies will lock down all hardware where possible so the user won't mess with it and screw it up.
 
toshison said:
They just want a new toy or to show up at external business meetings with all the latest tech in an effort to keep up with the Joneses.
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Or they like using a product and want to use a product they like. For me and at my work I can't think of a single thing I would need that an iphone couldn't do and a BB could. I often get a work BB when I out on work assignments and I find it the most unwieldy thing out there. It comes down to what you are used to.
 
AdRath said:
I don't know if you still can but through the mobile me service you could remotely wipe and track your iPhone.
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There are services for both apple and android that have the capability to wipe out all the information you want to, there usually paid apps, but well worth it!
 
OpenGambit said:
That may be true, but I know Osler now allows iphones (Mine still does not). So even biglaw is shifting away from BB only.
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I am not denying a shift, but I think it depends what are you willing to trade off, because the security is not on equal grounds. If my exposure is huge I would not want to rely on an app for 3.99 to purge a content of my device. I would like Apple to have a provision for that in their corporate package ....
 
AdRath said:
Or they like using a product and want to use a product they like. For me and at my work I can't think of a single thing I would need that an iphone couldn't do and a BB could. I often get a work BB when I out on work assignments and I find it the most unwieldy thing out there. It comes down to what you are used to.
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Exactly. I couldn't live without sufficiently large and tactile keyboard. Showstopper for me.
 
Please list me 5 aps that I would need for business that I cannot get on my BB that I would want to forefit having my desktop and everything that the BB offers . Even my kids prefer the BB for the BBM feature. Not a big deal now with all the unlimited texting now.

I hate the virtual keyboards Like my bb buttons

Read the Globe today, BB still has most of the smart phone market. So lots to go round. You keep you iphone for your itunes and be careful not to drop it like I do all the time with my BlackBerry.
 
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mxs said:
Exactly. I couldn't live without sufficiently large and tactile keyboard. Showstopper for me.
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I agree. I like the bb keyboard too. To me an iphone is just a toy.
 
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