Dear RIM, Could You Please Stop Shooting Yourself in the Foot?

As Google and Apple have blown past RIM in terms of application development by the community and adoption by users, the Waterloo-based smartphone manufacturer has been trying to play catch up. They have been trying to position themselves as a much more developer friendly platform with a set of tools and features to court the community to choose them over their rivals Apple and Google.

Located amongst the vast array of RIM buildings scattered across Waterloo is the Accelerator Centre, a world-class incubator home to many early stage start up companies looking to become the next RIM. Located in the Centre is the small but hard working start-up Kik, a cross-platform, real-time messaging service much like that of RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger. I knew these guys were up to something big when I would see the team working well into the night in February often coding until 3 or 4 am. Sure enough, they’ve been able to connect with users to the tune of zero to a million in 15 days since re-launching in October. A cross-platform styled BBM only makes sense. I, like many smartphone users don’t just have friends who all own a BlackBerry or all own an iPhone. BBM is great if all your friends are on a BlackBerry, but reality quickly settles in that they all aren’t. Kik, was a great example of a start-up trying to bridge the growing fragmentation occurring in the smartphone market, while doing it well. Heck, they had to fly extra servers to Idaho just to ensure their service wouldn’t crash.

Then late last week this happened, as told by CEO Ted Livingston

Early Friday morning, I awoke to a deeply dismaying and wholly unexpected message from BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM). It boils down to this: RIM is kicking BlackBerry users off Kik.

Kik had already been excluded from BlackBerry App World, so no new Kik downloads have been possible for BlackBerry users. But now RIM has shut down “push” access; as a result, messages to BlackBerry users will be delayed by up to an hour. RIM has also now removed access to the BlackBerry Software Development Kit and Signing Keys, so any future development is frozen.

On behalf of our nearly one million Kik users on Blackberry devices, we truly hope RIM reverses these steps.

What ever happened to RIM trying to court the developer community? As I mentioned in a previous post, last year I heard a RIM executive loudly boast about their win-win mentality with the outside world (carriers, developers) while their foes (Apple) plays by a win-lose mentality. So is booting Kik from the App World without an explanation a win-win mentality?

It’s time for RIM to make up it’s mind.

Are you going to let developers play in the sandbox or not? If you’re so concerned that an app made across the street by a team of 10 or so employees has gained more market traction then BBM, I fear you have bigger problems on the horizon.

UPDATE: RIM releases official statement on their issue with Kik.