Circling the RIM, er... Drain

From the LA Times:

Research in Motion announced five new BlackBerry smartphones, the first to run its new BlackBerry 7 mobile OS, on Wednesday in a bid to recapture market share and inject some new excitement into the company's products.

The devices will arrive at an important time for the Canadian company, one of the first to popularize email integration on a phone.

FIVE new phones????!!?? I'm sure THAT won't cause any confusion in the marketplace.

Memo to RIM: simplify. Have you learned nothing on the last three years???

I give RIM two years before they declare bankruptcy.

Apple's (Not So) Secret Stash

Via 9to5 Mac:



Fascinating. Apple doesn't need AT&T. It could buy it up just with cash on hand.

Nokia is suing Apple. Apple could make the suit go away by simply saying "drop the suit and we'll pay for your budget shortfalls - about $190 million - from last quarter. Hell, Apple could simply buy them, kill the company and forge on without batting an eye.

Excessive, you might say? I say no. It's good business.

A good business will take a portion (say, 2%) of its profits and just save them for a rainy day (like a recession or a patent infringement suit). That seems to be what Apple is doing - incrementally building its savings.

Every company should run their finances this way. Every family should run their finances this way...

Procter & Gamble Manages to Piss Off the Entire Production Community

Procter & Gamble, in an effort to save money and streamline its production timeline instituted a "Preferred Vendor" program, forcing its companies and agencies to use a set of around 30 production facilities, rather than the 125 or so that they used last year. And they want deep discounts, naturally, with no guarantee that just because a production house is preferred vendor that they'll see any work at all.

The entire production and creative community is up in arms over the policy. The quote that sums up the whole situation is this, from an unnamed producer:

"If Nike calls me up, which probably does one-tenth the advertising of P&G, I'm more likely to give Nike a deal despite the lower volume because they do better work," says one production company exec. "I don't sell products, I sell directors. So my product's only viable if they do good work. Why am I going to give someone a deal for work that's not going to do anything for my reel or my brand? It would just be for the money, and if it's just for the money, why am I giving them a big discount?"

Exactly.

via Creativity Magazine.