In late January RIM replaced its co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis with COO Thorsten Heins. As a now-former Blackberry user (I just switched to the HTC Rezound) this news certainly got my attention.

I expected to hear Heins address all the concerns of Blackberry users like frequent “white screen of death” issues, latency and even my chief concern (since I am becoming kind of a nut about this stuff), Blackberry models having some of the highest radiation in the industry.

Instead, the headlines were that Heins believes no major changes were necessary, or as Bloomberg Businessweek put it, RIM is “Staying is the Course”.

Bloomberg’s Peter Burrows and Hugo Miller’s article essentially skewered Heins for this – and used a Blackberry buried in a grave to depict where they really thought RIM is headed. This is about the worst image a PR person wants to see, yet it was no great shock because Heins didn’t say the right things in his interviews. This is a shame because it was his golden opportunity to do so. A new CEO’s first public outing is the chance for him/her to state goals, address challenges, explain the way forward and, ideally, re-shape people’s perceptions.

Had I been on the public relations team counseling Heins I would have told him to accentuate the positive while acknowledging challenges. I’d have counseled him to state the big ones, which would give him a chance to explain the steps the company is taking to tackle problems. Everyone knows RIM has serious issues. It is ridiculous to try to hide them. The trick is to re-frame the discussion while addressing how problems are going to be fixed.

The old adage “honesty is the best policy” may sound a bit old fashioned, but when you are talking about a company like RIM, and the state it’s in, they would have been better served by being open and honest. Unfortunately it is too late for Heins’ public introduction.

Perhaps moving forward RIM will learn from its mistakes and carve out a better public relations outcome. To change perceptions they must publicly acknowledge the obvious – significant products are necessary not only to stave off Apple, but also to stay relevant in the mobile marketplace.

Maybe they’d even win back former customers like me.

Share on Facebook

Technorati Tags: RIM Blackberry Public Relations PR

Share/Save

If you wanted to catch a TV show or movie for free, Megaupload was the place to go. If you wanted to view something that was on a long time ago (Rambo movies in my case, for example), somewhere on the Megaupload website someone had uploaded that file for you. Others used it for other purposes, including file storage and home video and photo uploading, for example.

Those days are now over. The US government has shut down the website. The homepage is gone, replaced with a notice saying “This domain name associated with the website megaupload.com has been seized pursuant to an order issued by a U.S. District court.”

The Associated Press is reporting the government wants to begin deleting data stored on the site as early as Thursday. What does this mean for users? This will not be the last attempt by the government to shut down file-sharing sites. Those of us older than 20 recall Napster and the RIAA’s filing of lawsuits against every single person in America who downloaded one too many songs from the site. More recently, Limewire was taken down by the Feds. Owners of file-sharing sites will have to take care to either not store consumers’ data, or else will need to change business practices.

Consumers should keep in mind the government will likely come after other sides which give customers free data, such as alluc.org and crackle.com. My personal recommendation is to not share credit card info or personal data on these sites. Not only for security reasons, but if the government goes after those sites as well, they will have a list of who was using the site and for how much. Who knows, depending on what you did, the government could be after you next.

Share on Facebook

Share/Save

by Sam Friedman

If you’re a shareholder with Apple, you’re quite happy: shares are up about $30, or 4.3%, since Tim Cook took over as CEO of Apple from the late Steve Jobs. If you’re a fan of the iPhone, you’re in good shape: the iPhone 4S sold over 4 million units in its launch weekend, even without the presence of Jobs. Apple said about 20 million people activated their free iCloud accounts in its first week, a record for mobile software.

Cook has big shoes to fill. People associated Apple computers with Jobs, who along with Steve Wozniak (who actually built Apple I) and “adult supervisor” Ronald Wayne (who later sold his share of Apple stock for $800 and received a total of $2,300 from the whole ordeal-his 10% stake would have made him $22 billion now), designed the first Apple computer in 1976. Although Jobs was exiled from Apple’s management from 1985-199 , he returned with a new vision-to make Apple and its Macintosh computers the most dominant OS on the market. For the next 15 years, Jobs oversaw the rise of Apple from a second-tier program to Bill Gate’s Windows PC giant to the most dominant and wealthy corporation on the planet.

Tim Cook, who has been with Apple since Jobs hired him in 1998, served as Apple CEO briefly in 2004 when Jobs was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He also served a brief stint as CEO in 2009 when Jobs underwent a liver transplant, so it isn’t as if Cook is a stranger to running Apple. The question is: how will he manage Apple’s success following Jobs’s death? Whereas Jobs was visible, and associated with Apple, Cook is described as being more reserved, someone who is laid back and prefers things to be kept in the boardrooms until the final moment. Gartner analyst Michael King is quoted in a CNN story as saying by August 2013, 2 years after Jobs resigned as CEO, his effect on the company will have worn off, and everything after that will be part of the Cook legacy.

Cook has been handed a gifted opportunity as CEO of a corporation even the other 499 Fortune 500 CEOs would love to have. So far, all indications appear to show Cook is prepared to continue the work Jobs did, and not make any bold, radical changes to a winning formula.

Share on Facebook

Technorati Tags: Apple, Consumer, iPhone, Mobile, Steve Jobs, Tech, Tim Cook

Share/Save