I always enjoy reading Al Sacco’s interviews @CIO and his latest one with RIM’s CEO, Thorsten Heins, does not disappoint. Sacco poses some really tough questions to RIM’s CEO and elicits some great responses that really give you a feel for what RIM has in store for us and his understanding of the current situation.
Some of the highlights of the interview include:
- BlackBerry 10 touch and keyboard launches will be one after another “kind of like a one-two punch”
- Thorsten Heins makes a point of carrying competitor devices for research.
- The number of devices RIM will offer is going to be dramatically reduced to focus on quality
- BlackBerry 10 delay is not as dramatic as many people see it but Heins could not disclose details
- RIM missed the boat on 4G in the US while focusing on global device rollout
Last but not least Heins had a strong message as to why BlackBerry 10 was delayed into the first quarter of 2013:
The delay of BlackBerry 10 is not because we added stuff to it. The delay is because our software groups were actually so successful in coding the various feature components and building blocks that when we put them into the main "trunk line," as we call it, when we wanted to build the first main release, we got overwhelmed by integration efforts. I had to make a decision. I could actually have kept the schedule, if I had made a sacrifice on quality and on platform stability. And I decided not to do that, because I need to make sure that when we deliver a BlackBerry, it is best quality.
Am I disappointed that we had to shift it into the first quarter? Yes, I am. But the point is, it was a decision between: Rush it out again, and then fix the quality stuff later; or bring it out with high quality. What I commit to the public out there is that when we ship BlackBerry 10, we will do it at high quality. That was the decision I made.
I highly recommend checking out the full Q&A interview at CIO.com
Corey Davis ( View Profile) - Posts: