Yellowberry

I guess I don't know where to begin on this, except to say that I'm sorry that I ever owned a BlackBerry, back when the device looked like a chunky pager. First it sold out its users to Saudi Arabia earlier this month, and now it's doing the same in the second most populous country in the world (India).

Yes, I realize that Research In Motion is facing very stiff competition in the smartphone market. But its one selling point has been its integration into business email infrastructures--something that neither AT&T (iPhone) nor Google (Android) nor Hewlett-Packard (now the suzerains of Palm) seem interested in. And there's a huge--nay, make that ginormous--difference between pissing off hundreds of thousands of individual phone users and pissing off the domestic and foreign corporations who will now have to scramble to find, buy and implement a viable alternative, all the while trying to minimize the damage done.

Walking away from your core defense--i.e. a corporate user-base which can be counted on to vent their outrage on the pols they put into office--is, quite bluntly, stupid. Sooner or later these self-appointed snoops will have to be taught the lesson that the internet is not their satrapy. And, weakened though it is in the consumer market, Research in Motion is uniquely placed to fight this battle on their home ground in the enterprise market. They've thrown that advantage away for good, and I simply cannot grok such monumentally yellow-bellied stupidity.

Look. Normally I despise war metaphors when it comes to business. Sun Tsu and Miyamoto Musashi lived in completely different times, and the analogies only stretch so far. But meekly agreeing to surrender when you could pick the battleground and make allies of your customers? That's moronic in any context.

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Disclaimer: Dennis and I jointly own stock in RIM. But not for much longer. When it's all said and done, investment in the technology sector is about subsidizing the guts to play the game short- and long-term. Cravenly caving to two governments with less-than-stellar human rights records (when there are plenty more of them around to notice) shows neither. Buh-bye...