QNX’s Reverse Takeover of RIM

Remember that I do not speak for Google. Everything I say here is my own personal opinion and conjecture.

As a resident of Waterloo and a graduate of the University of Waterloo, I know many people in this community who work for Research In Motion (RIM) or who have friends or family members who work for RIM. In some sense, we all have a vested interest in RIM’s continued growth and survival.

Which is why the events of the past 1-2 years have been particularly dismaying. Which, interestingly enough, seems to coincide with RIM’s acquisition of QNX Software Systems. RIM was in trouble before this, but it’s as if the purchase of QNX was the catalyst for RIM’s latest set of woes. Which makes me wonder who is actually running the RIM ship these days…

There have been departures of high-ranking RIM executives and managers in recent months as responsibilities have been shifted to the QNX side of the company. There has been much disarray and confusion among developers about the future of the BlackBerry platform and how they’re supposed to be developing their apps — I’m sorry, but Adobe AIR isn’t what developers want, they want a real SDK (where is it?) with a real platform (not just an operating system) underneath. They want all the features available in BlackBerry OS today with some updates to bring it up to modern times (like say supporting Java 6 — it’s so painful to move back to BlackBerry development after experiencing Android development). They want reasons to spend their time working on BlackBerry apps.

This is pure speculation on my part, but it sure feels like QNX has done a reverse takeover of RIM and is trying to revamp the BlackBerry ecosystem to fits its own view of the world. And it doesn’t look like it’s going to work, does it?