The much-anticipated software upgrade for RIM’s PlayBook is finally here (yes, the same one that we were told in April 2011 would arrive ”very, very soon”). As expected, the free PlayBook OS 2.0 update includes an email inbox that integrates accounts from various social networks, a built-in calendar and support for Android apps—but still no BlackBerry Messenger. Is it enough to save a gadget that has received tepid reviews, had its price slashed and been overshadowed by executive misbehaviour? Actually, it might be. Techies approve, and deep discounting increased RIM’s share of the Canadian tablet market to about 15 per cent. It also doesn’t hurt that the PlayBook now has a few hockey players on its team (although we’re not sure that it’s helped much, either). Read the entire story [Globe and Mail] »
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Two of Rob Ford’s most loyal, most fiscally conservative friends quarrel over money
Doug Ford and Denzil Minnan-Wong are having a bit of a tiff over whether or not Build Toronto executives should make lots of money or lots and lots of money. Last year, the city-owned real estate company paid out six-figure bonuses to its corporate brass on top of the six-figure salaries they already pull in. There have been grumblings about Build execs’ pay outs before, but the organization isn’t funded by taxpayer dollars so there’s no need to call the mayor on this one. Besides Councillor Ford says the big-time bonuses are the cost of doing business with some of the city’s best and brightest. Minnan-Wong, a fiscal conservative and dedicated member of Team Ford himself, however, isn’t convinced. He counters bringing in windfall profits by selling land for residential development in the current real estate climate isn’t exactly a challenging undertaking. Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »
(Images: Christopher Drost)
A new BlackBerry exhibit showcases primitive RIM products (no, not the PlayBook)
With RIM-bashing at a high (naturally, we’ve done our share), sometimes we need a reminder that Research In Motion still has fans—and die-hard ones, too. Starting this week, tech enthusiast and curator Syd Bolton will celebrate the 13-year history of the BlackBerry in an exhibit at the Personal Computer Museum in Brantford. Bolton, who also owns Canada’s largest collection of video games, has gathered more than 20 BlackBerrys, including the delightfully archaic 850, which ran on two AA batteries and displayed eight lines of text. We admit, it’s nice to see BlackBerry getting some love—but museums tend to show relics from the past. Which makes it feel like BlackBerry has already been relegated to cellphone history. Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »
Five things we learned about RIM’s boardroom strategy from Roger Martin’s Globe and Mail interview
Roger Martin holds a lot of titles: Research In Motion board member, dean of business at the University of Toronto, Toronto Life cover boy. Now he can add “spiller of secrets” to the list. In a frank exchange with the Globe and Mail’s Gordon Pitts, Martin derided RIM’s critics, talked about past failures and provided new details about last month’s executive shuffle. Martin’s top five insights about the struggling tech company, after the jump.
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After enduring months of negative press, Research in Motion finally earned kudos from tech bloggers following leaked images of its long-delayed BlackBerry 10 operating system. The images, which were emailed to Crackberry.com, reportedly come from a 14-page file prepared by one of RIM’s external ad agency partners. If the pics are legit (we all know that isn’t always the case with the tech sector), the slick new user interface includes homepage widgets, better app folders, video chat and a universal inbox like the one found in the PlayBook’s OS 2.0—all of which have won approval from pundits at Crackberry, Gizmodo and PCMag. With the delayed rollout of the operating system being blamed for the smartphone’s dismal global market share, we bet RIM execs are happy for any kind words. Even if that means they’ve got a snitch in the building. Read the entire story [Crackberry] »
Almost Rich: an examination of the true cost of city living and why rich is never rich enough
An income of $196,000 places you in the country’s top one per cent of earners. But does it make you wealthy?
The Western world has become chastened and frugal. The reasons are many: corporations crouched in fear of another, much worse recession; penniless governments a-toppling; and Europe, for the foreseeable future, mired in a debt debacle. But you wouldn’t know it from life in Toronto, where a luxury condo opens its doors every week and we queue for hunks of exotic chocolate at the new Maple Leaf Gardens Loblaws. We’re bouncing along in a prosperity bubble.
Read the rest of Jonathan Kay’s essay » Read the rest of this entry »
Read profiles of five Toronto households and how they spend their money »
While consumers and investors alike shunned Research in Motion last year, the BlackBerry’s reputation for security managed to maintain the company’s hold on the market for governments, banks, law firms and other leak-averse businesses. But now even the security-conscious are moving on. The U.S. military reportedly plans to use Android devices to handle classified documents, while drilling giant Halliburton will swap its BlackBerrys for iPhones over the next two years. Neither deal will sink RIM—Halliburton employees, for instance, account for only about 4,500 BlackBerrys—but both show that the paranoid (or the presidential) have other options. Still, when even Halliburton doesn’t want to be seen with you, things aren’t looking good. Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »
Not even superheroes (especially not these ones) can make the BlackBerry cool
(Image: Research in Motion)
Research in Motion has fallen into a classic high school Catch-22: the harder the BlackBerry maker tries to be cool, the less cool it actually seems. Case in point: the Bold Team, a set of laughably lame superhero characters recently introduced on RIM’s blog. Apparently, the company, after receiving 35,000 responses to a tweet soliciting New Year’s resolutions, “decided to organize the data and share it in a fun way” (we can just smell the desperation). The resulting infographic features characters like Gogo Girl, for whom “saving the day with a brilliant strategy, a smile or a spatula is nothing new.” The tone-deaf attempts at cute copy are only outdone by the pink and purple colour scheme, which we find reminiscent of Bratz dolls. Since it already alienated the business community, perhaps RIM is now going after the preteen market? Read the entire article [Globe and Mail] »
BMO says the housing market is in a balloon, not a bubble (apparently, there’s an important difference)
With confusion already rife about whether or not Canada’s housing market is in a bubble, Bank of Montreal economists have further muddied the debate with a competing (and equally vague) comparison. In a special report, they suggest the housing market is actually more like a balloon, explaining that “while bubbles always burst, a balloon often deflates slowly in the absence of a ‘pin’ ” (we gather a “pin” would be an event like a spike in interest rates, a severe recession or stalled foreign investment). Switching gears, they add that even Toronto’s hot condo market will likely “cool” rather than “correct.” As far as we can tell, that’s good news. Though we think the banking folks could probably stand to drop the metaphors. They’re confusing us. Read the entire story [Globe and Mail] »
Q&A: Patrick Dovigi, the NHL-goalie-turned-entrepreneur who won Toronto’s lucrative garbage contract
Your company, Green for Life, has multi-million-dollar contracts in Oshawa, Whitby and Hamilton—and now one for 165,000 homes from Yonge Street west to Etobicoke. Not bad for a 32-year-old.
I guess I’ve done well. I just bought a place in Forest Hill.
So you’ll be collecting your own garbage.
Yep. My neighbours are already hounding me to see if they can put out extra bags.
Tell us about your bid. The city currently collects at a yearly cost of $166 per household. You say you can do it for $106. Are people wrong to think your numbers are too good to be true?
They’re 100 per cent wrong. We had 20 people researching this contract for 10 weeks. We followed every city truck that left every yard, noted when they started and counted how many houses they visited, what time they got back in and where they dumped their loads.
And what did you see? Read the rest of this entry »
Each truck was collecting from a maximum of 675 houses a day. In Hamilton, my employees collect from up to 930 houses a day in the same amount of time.
Bay Street bigwigs, including Mark Mobius and David Bissett, share the secrets of finance
(Image: Duckie Monster)
Finance types aren’t known for their reticence (the fast-talking Gordon Gecko stereotype exists for a reason), but still, the Bay Streeters interviewed in the latest issue of Report on Business were even more candid than we would have expected. Mark Mobius, David Dreman, Veronika Hirsch and seven other finance gurus gave specific advice about what to invest in right now (emerging markets, index funds and high-yielding dividend stocks, respectively), before delving into their triumphs, their failures and their concerns over global markets. Asked what keeps him awake at night, David Bissett responded, “That investors are going to realize that the U.S. emperor has no clothes. The shit is going to hit the fan there sooner or later, unless they can get their act together—and I don’t think they can.” Timothy Geithner and friends, take note. Read the entire story [Globe and Mail] »
RIM hopes NHL players (including one Maple Leaf) can make the PlayBook look cool
Hockey players and Research in Motion now have more in common than a tendency towards bouts of unresponsiveness—RIM has managed to coax five NHL players, including Toronto Maple Leafs winger Joffrey Lupul, into filming video diaries to promote the much-maligned PlayBook tablet. A teaser video shows Lupul, along with the Anaheim Ducks’ Bobby Ryan, the New York Rangers’ Martin Biron, the Philadelphia Flyers’ Scott Hartnell and the New York Islanders’ Michael Grabner, eating cheese-laden sandwiches, signing autographs, going shopping and playing cards. (Hockey players: they’re just like us!) We’re intrigued by the marketing gambit because it signals that new CEO Thorsten Heins is serious about his vows to work on RIM’s image. Plus, it’s a big ol’ slap in the face to ousted CEO Jim Balsillie, who never did realize his NHL dreams. Read the entire story [Financial Post] »
As the tech and finance pundits sink their teeth into Research in Motion, Fairfax Financial CEO Prem Watsa is sinking his money instead. Watsa and Fairfax have nearly doubled their combined stake in RIM to 5.12 per cent following the game of executive musical chairs that ended Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie’s tenure, installed Thorsten Heins as CEO and minted Watsa as the company’s newest board member. That means the group now owns 26.85 million RIM shares, worth a total of $437 million. Watsa, who was reportedly the major catalyst for the reshuffle, has been called Canada’s Warren Buffet for his ability to spot a shrewd investment—in other words, he’s not somebody who would waste his money on a failing company. Perhaps we shouldn’t count RIM out just yet. Read the entire story [Globe and Mail] »
Jim Balsillie will be off RIM’s board by the summer—at least so says one activist investor
Are Jim Balsillie‘s days at RIM numbered? (Image: Nan Palmero)
As if losing his job—and most of RIM’s value—wasn’t bad enough, former Research In Motion CEO Jim Balsillie is now being trash talked by an activist investor. Vic Alboini, a RIM shareholder and the CEO of Canadian merchant bank Jaguar Financial, told the Financial Post that Balsillie will be history at RIM by July. “My intuitive sense is that this whole arrangement is somewhat transitional and that there are further changes ahead,” he offered, pointing out that while Mike Lazaridis has been made vice-chair of the board and chair of an innovation committee, Balsillie has no specific role apart from simply serving on the board. While it’s tempting to write Alboini off as just another angry shareholder, activist investors do have the capacity to wreak major change. It may just be time for Balsillie to focus on those hockey dreams again. Read the entire story [Financial Post] »
RIM needs an image overhaul—but is Thorsten Heins the man for the job?
Although freshly minted Research in Motion CEO Thorsten Heins thinks “no drastic change” is needed to fix the Canadian tech giant, he’s laid out plans to appease RIM investors wondering where their money went what he intends to do nonetheless. Heins has indicated RIM will step up its marketing game (the search for a chief marketing officer has already started)—a good move since the BlackBerry maker clearly needs an image overhaul. But, as the Toronto Star’s David Olive argues, Heins is not the kind of captivating tech evangelist—à la Steve Jobs—who will make us forget RIM’s flubs and flailing, glitches and gaffes. For proof of Olive’s point, look no further than RIM’s suite of YouTube videos introducing their new CEO; hearing Heins’ declare in a soothing monotone, “I’m absolutely excited” makes us think he’s not particularly, ahem, Bold.
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