The 5 Reasons Why Facebook Is Worth So Much Money | TechCrunch

By Josh Constine

How did Facebook become worth so much money that it could file for the biggest IPO in tech history? By building a highly defensible product, platform, and advertising business on top of brilliant talent and valuable data. It now has several competitive advantages that protect it from disruption and could give it a long life as the primary online identity provider. Here are the 5 components that make Facebook a smart long-term bet for investors, regardless of its exact IPO pricing.

Network Effect

Displacing Facebook as the mainstream online social network would be next to impossible. It brought authenticated identity to the internet –a crucial utility that compelled users to join. No other service may be able to add on top of Facebook something as valuable as what Facebook added to Myspace, friendster, and other services where you didn’t have to be yourself.

Facebook’s ingenius distribution strategy, detailed in The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick, allowed the service to capitalize on this value-add and spread to the farthest reaches of the globe. Eventually the network effect took hold, with Facebook’s ever-growing user base making it ever-more valuable and attractive to new users.

And now inertia has set in. Users have invested considerable time into Facebook building their profiles, walls, interest graphs, and most importantly, their social graphs. As Facebook handles a wide range of use cases and a critical mass of any person’s friends already using it, a competing social network can’t just be as good or better, it would need to be massive improvement to lead users astray. The insulation to competition provided by the network effect makes it a safe long-term bet for investors.

The News Feed’s EdgeRank Algorithm

For five years, Facebook has been collecting data and refining its EdgeRank algorithm, which determines what of all the content your friends share ends up in your news feed, and how prominently. By using Likes, comments, and shares to determine what’s most relevant, Facebook had developed arguably the best automated content curation engine in the world. The news feed also gets to draw on the web’s largest database of photos, and the friend tags they feature which helped Facebook go viral.

For new users without tons of data points, Facebook can still predict what they might be interested in seeing. For existing users, especially veterans of the site that actively use its feedback mechanisms, the news feed consistently surfaces relevant content. EdgeRank creates that the highly addicting experience that drives Facebook’s enormous time on site, return visit rate, and engagement. Even if Twitter or Google+ had all the content of Facebook, it could take them years to develop an algorithm that produces such a relevant feed.

Talent

Mark Zuckerberg sees the future. His product vision allows Facebook to release features that users grow into rather than out of. Zuckerberg has integrated progressive home brewed ideas as well as those that couldn’t reach their full potential when launched elsewhere. He has pushed the service to constantly reinvent itself, allowing it to stay cool and relevant 8 years after launch.

Zuck’s dedication to making the world a better place through interconnection and openness has also attracted other visionaries. COO Sheryl Sandberg‘s efficiency has made the company very profitable, and her willingness to experiment means Facebook will continue to revolutionize advertising through behavioral targeting and social content-infused ads. VP of Product Chris Coxhas led Facebook’s social design movement, where 1st and 3rd party products are made to leverage Facebook’s data and community from the start, rather than bolting them on.

With the promise of changing the world and a lean, fun-loving company culture, Facebook has been pulling top engineering, product, and business talent away from larger companies like Google that are saddled with product bloat and bureaucracy. It’s also been aggressively acquiring disruptive startups such as Paul Bucheit and Brett Taylor’s FriendFeed, Blake Ross’ Parakey, Sam Lessin’s Drop.io, and Josh Williams’ Gowalla. The rockstar product designers and executives ensures innovation will continue to flow from within Facebook.

The IPO will provide Facebook more cash for acquisitions and give its talent the liquidity they deserve. Though there’s always the chance they could cash out and leave, the ability to sell a little stock and upgrade their lifestyle might keep employees happy enough to stick around.

The Apps and Games Platform

Facebook has created a gaming platform proven to offer viral growth. While the service has curtailed some of loudest viral channels, organic growth opportunities remain and on-site advertising for games has produced high returns on investment for companies like Zynga. Facebook has fostered an enormous community of developers that pay while populating the site with engaging apps and content, and that won’t ever disappear overnight.

Facebook games are often infinite building simulations or twitch puzzlers, have long session lengths, and let users make vanity purchases so they can show off while simultaneously hooking them deeper into a game. They readily produce “whales”, or people who spend orders of magnitude more than the average player. Mobile is emerging as a lucrative platform for Apple and Google, and Facebook is just getting started there, but it does have an enormous install base to work from.

By attracting developers early with free growth, clamping down once they had invested, and then taxing them 30% through its virtual currency Credits, Facebook has turned its games platform into a consistent money maker. Now some developers are experimenting with digital media sales and rentals, pay-per-view, as well as offering virtual currency microincentives, showing potential for platform monetization beyond games.

Ad Targeting

Age, gender, current city, hometown, employers, education, friends, interests, and now in-app activity and ecommerce habits. When users share this data with friends, they’re also sharing with Facebook. This gives Facebook possibly the most accurate and robust set of ad targeting data in the world. With both an self-serve tool and ad reps handling premium accounts, Facebook can provide effective advertising solutions to both local business and international brands.

Facebook has developed eye-catching ads by combining this targeting with social-content infused ad creative. Viewers see the names and faces of friends who Like an advertised brand. Interactions between their friends and brands, such as Likes, app usage, and checkins, can become the ads themselves through Sponsored Stories. These trump, and are increasingly pulling spend away from more cookie-cutter display and search ads targeted through cookies and keywords.

Facebook has only begun to monetize through ads. The sidebars where ads primarily appear have been kept small and unobtrusive. Facebook is now mixing ads back into the web version of the news feed, where they’re sure to be seen between organic social content. Facebook has yet to show ads to its hundreds of millions of daily mobile users, but Sponsored Stories could show up there soon too. Finally, it could one day create an ad network that allows other sites to pay to show logged-in Facebook users the same highly targeted social ads they see on Facebook.com.

5 mexicanas integran el top 10 minorista - Negocios - CNNExpansion.com

Por: Jesús Ugarte

En el ranking de Deloitte, Soriana es la cadena mejor ubicada en AL y Oxxo subió un par de peldaños; pese al entorno, los planes a meses sin intereses permitieron elevar ventas a tasa de doble dígito.

Con su plan de contar con 11,000 tiendas en 2014, Oxxo será el segundo grupo comercial

que más facture en México en los siguientes años. (Foto: Cortesía Oxxo)

CIUDAD DE MÉXICO (CNNExpansión) — Cinco grupos comerciales mexicanos figuran entre las 10 compañías delsector de ventas al menudeo (retail) que más facturan en América Latina, revela el estudio 'Global Powers of Retailing' (Potencias Mundiales de la Industria Minorista) que cada año elaboran la consultora Deloitte y la revista estadounidense STORES.

Según el reporte, con base en cifras de 2010 el primer lugar lo ocupó la brasileña Pao de Acúcar con un nivel de venta de 18,318 millones de dólares (mdd), seguido de las chilenas Cencosud y Falabella con 11,791 mdd y 7,473 mdd, respectivamente.

Soriana, en el cuarto lugar, es la mejor ubicada de las mexicanas en el ranking con una facturación de 7,425 mdd, le sigue en quinto lugar la brasileña Lojas Americanas con 5,359 mdd, al tiempo que Oxxo (subsidiaria de Femsa),Comercial Mexicana, Grupo Comercial Chedraui y El Puerto de Liverpool, ocuparon los sitios 6,7,8 y 9, al alcanzar ingresos de 4,933, 4,348, 4,142 y 3,845 mdd en el mismo orden.

Cabe señalar que Oxxo subió dos peldaños y superó aComercial Mexicana como reflejo de la combinación de su agresivo programa de expansión de los últimos años y la tasa de doble dígito en ventas a tiendas comparables (con más de un año en operación). Analistas de Credit Suisse han anticipado que en un plazo no lejano, la subsidiaria de Oxxo se convertirá en el segundo grupo comercial con el mayor volumen de ventas en México.

Según el 'Global Powers of Retailing', la empresa número 10 que más factura en América Latina es Signet Jewelers, cadena comercial de Bermuda con un nivel de 3,437 mdd.

A nivel mundial, la americana Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. lidera las compañías que más venden en el sector minorista, seguida de la francesa Carrefour, Tesco PLC de Reino Unido, la alemana Metro AG y la estadounidense The Kroger Co.

Meses sin intereses apoyan posición de mexicanas

Pese al entorno adverso que presentaron las economías global y local, varias de las grandes cadenas comerciales mexicanas lograron reportar crecimientos de dos dígitos en ventas en 2010 gracias a sus promociones de pago a meses sin intereses y los modelos de financiamiento utilizados en general, comenta Omar Camacho Martínez, socio de la industria de Consumo de Deloitte México.

El estudio elaborado analiza el desempeño de las 250 cadenas de autoservicio más importantes del mundo, sobre los niveles de ventas registrados en un periodo de tiempo determinado y destaca que, de las cinco empresas mexicanas incluidas en la lista (Soriana, Oxxo, Comercial Mexicana, Chedraui y Liverpool), cuatro obtuvieron crecimiento a tasa de dos cifras en sus ventas y mejoraron su posición en el ranking, destacando los casos de Oxxo y Liverpool, las cuales se ubicaron en la posición 26 y 29 del listado respectivamente.

"Tanto Oxxo como Liverpool (la empresa número 39 de 'Las 500' de Expansión) han seguido estrategias de expansión exitosas. Por una parte, Oxxo se convirtió en un competidor importante para las cadenas de supermercados debido al crecimiento exponencial en el número de tiendas, al modelo de cercanía con el usuario y conveniencia para la adquisición de productos básicos, así como a la oferta para el pago de servicios. Por otro lado, Liverpool ha hecho inversiones importantes en diferentes regiones del país", menciona Camacho Martínez.

A la fecha, Oxxo opera más de 9,000 tiendas y con base en lo señalado por directivos de FEMSA, el objetivo es alcanzar 11,000 unidades hacia finales de 2014. En octubre pasado, Juan Fonseca, director de Relación con Inversionistas de FEMSA, reveló que tan sólo en México se puede llegar a tener hasta 15,000 tiendas.

Por su parte, José Antonio Diego, de Liverpool, consideró que pese al agresivo programa de crecimiento que ha observado la departamental, el mercado todavía ofrece grandes oportunidades, por lo que en el quinquenio 2011-2015 abrirá de 8 a 10 tiendas para agregar de 40 a 50 en ese lapso.

"Gracias a la estabilidad del mercado interno, estas compañías han logrado aumentar sus ventas y conseguir crecimientos de esta magnitud. Otro factor importante es el impulso en el crédito al consumo soportado por los bancos y el modelo de financiamiento de estas tiendas detallistas", dice el socio de la industria de Consumo de Deloitte México.

"La promoción de meses sin intereses fue la más poderosa estrategia para fomentar el consumo interno en la población, como ejemplo se presenta el ‘Buen Fin', temporada que impulsó el crecimiento de la cartera activa de las tarjetas de crédito en el país".

De las compañías mexicanas mencionadas, sólo Oxxo y Chedraui tienen operaciones fuera del país.

BBC News - Facebook 'to go public with $10bn share offering'

Facebook 'to go public with $10bn share offering'

Continue reading the main story

Facebook will begin the process of becoming a publicly-listed company this week, valuing the social networking site at between $75bn and $100bn, reports suggest.

Facebook makes most of its money through advertising

The company plans to file papers with the US financial watchdog on Wednesday, according to the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal.

The flotation later this year would raise about $10bn, they reported.

This would be one of the biggest share sales seen on Wall Street.

It would dwarf the $1.9bn raised by Google when it went public in 2004.

It would still, however, be some way short of the $20bn raised by carmaker General Motors in November 2010.

'Brilliant achievement'

The reports suggest that Morgan Stanley will be the lead underwriter for the sale, with Goldman Sachs also expected to be heavily involved.

Rumours of Facebook's so-called initial public offering (IPO) have circulated for many months, and the company has maintained it will not comment on the subject.

The reported valuation would make Facebook one of the world's biggest companies by market capitalisation.

"Facebook a brilliant achievement, but $75-$100bn? Would make Apple look really cheap," said Rupert Murdoch on Twitter.

The company was started by Mark Zuckerberg and fellow students at Harvard University in 2004 and has quickly grown to become one of the world's most popular websites.

It makes most of its money through advertising.

As a private company, Facebook does not have to publish its accounts, but reports in January last year suggested a document sent by Goldman Sachs to its clients showed the firm made a net profit of $355m on revenues of $1.2bn in the first nine months of 2010.

Quantum dots could increase fiber optic bandwidth up to 10 times (video) -- Engadget

By Mat Smith

Nothing screams World of Tomorrow quite like quantum dots. Alongside the possibility of paint-on solar cells, the technology could also multiply optic fiber bandwidth by up to ten times. The Photonic Network Research Institute at NICT has been able to crank up the capacity of the data transmission system by combining a light source and photonic crystal fiber. The quantum dots act as the light source, and via the NICT's new "sandwiched sub-nano separator structure" [above], they can be tweaked to work at 70THz -- far in excess of the 10THz frequencies typically used. Aside from optical communications, the potency of these high frequencies allow it to pass beyond skin, opening up the use of quantum dots to medical scanning and high resolution cell imaging. Is there anything these dots can't do? Catch a slightly more technical explanation in the video right after the break.

Apple's First Quarter Earnings: The Unbelievable Numbers

Apple's First Quarter Earnings: The Unbelievable Numbers:

Todd Wasserman

Apple‘s blowout first quarter was notable for many reasons, not least of which was the company’s record revenues of $46.3 billion.

But the quarter was remarkable for several other reasons as well. Apple, which is known for keeping its affairs close to the vest, released a raft of information on Tuesday. Here are some of the highlights:

• Apple sold 37 million iPhones in the quarter, a 128% jump over the comparable quarter in 2010.
• iPad sales hit 15.4 million, a rise of 111%.
• Mac sales were 5.2 million, an increase of 26%.
• Apple sold 15.4 million iPods, a number which is down 21% as the iPhone cannibalizes sales of more limited-function devices.
• Apple now has $97.6 billion in cash on hand.
• Revenues from iTunes hit $1.7 billion. More than 140 million apps and pieces of content were downloaded on Dec. 25.
• There are 1.5 million iPads being used by educational institutions.
• iCloud has 85 million users. There are now 550,000 apps available. Developers of such apps have earned more than $4 billion, $700 million in Q1.
• Apple Stores produced $6.1 billion in revenues for the quarter. The average revenue per store was $17.1 million vs. $12 million last year. There are about 22,000 visitors per store per week.
• Apple’s revenues for the quarter were higher than the company’s revenues for its entire fiscal 2009.

Image courtesy of Flickr, nechbi

5 Things RIM’s New CEO Absolutely Must Not Do | TechCrunch

5 Things RIM’s New CEO Absolutely Must Not Do | TechCrunch

Whenever a company appoints new leadership here in the tech world, the blogosphere seems to unanimously post about what the new top dog needs to do to make his or her company better. I promise, you’ll see dozens of headlines today talking about what Thorsten Heins must do in order to save BlackBerry.

In many cases, I agree with what’s being said. RIM’s in trouble, and without a new vision the company risks slipping even further behind the competition. You know… “the other fruit company.”

So rather than list out all of the things Heins needs to do to save the company (which, we can all agree, would take a really long time), I’m going to tell you guys the five things that Mr. Heins absolutely must not, without a doubt, under no circumstances… do.

That is, if RIM wants to keep selling smartphones.

Be Complacent

In less than a day at the post, Heins has proven himself to be quite the quote machine. My favorite: “I don’t think there is a drastic change needed.”

Alright, Mr. Heins. In that case we have a problem.

First, let’s just take a look at RIM’s numbers over the course of 2011. According to comScore, RIM slid from an 8.6 percent market share in January (as far as mobile phone OEMs go) to a 6.5 percent share in November. Where smartphone OSes are concerned, the dip was much more pronounced. RIM’s 30.4 percent share in January fell to almost half that, 16.6 percent, by November.

If these numbers can tell us anything, it’s that a drastic change is in fact needed. Yes, the BlackBerry brand did make a huge impact on the mobile landscape, and sure, there are still plenty of people in the Middle East and Europe (and even here) that heart their little BBM-machine. But whatever mind share the brand used to have is dwindling, just as the numbers are.

Sure, a superphone with killer specs would be great. A solid operating system? Yep, the company needs that too. But until leadership over in Waterloo realizes that enterprise-level security on messaging and a physical keyboard are no longer bringing in the “ooohs” and “aaahs”, nothing will change.

Lose Track Of Time

Anticipation can be deadly, as can forced urgency. RIM has struggled with both in the past year.

The company first announced it would be transitioning over to the QNX OS in April of 2010. It’s now 2012. Granted, the BlackBerry PlayBook is enjoying its QNX status (although the PlayBook has its own problems), but when we focus on smartphones the company has yet to offer or even announce a QNX-powered (BBX, or more formally BB 10) BlackBerry.

A big part of the mobile realm has to do with timing. If you know Apple’s about to release a new iPhone or that Google is about to pop out a new version of Android, you aren’t going to run out and pick up a new phone. No, you wait. It’s a fact these companies need to embrace.

If I’m a BlackBerry owner in April of 2010, and I hear that an entirely revamped, much more powerful OS is in the works, I want to wait to upgrade my hardware. But over the course of the year, Google launches Ice Cream Sandwich and Apple releases Siri and the iPhone 4S. And what do you know? RIM’s market share tanks to half of what it was. Obviously QNX wasn’t worth the wait for many.

I’m not saying the move to QNX is a bad decision. The opposite, in fact. But if you’re going to bet the company on a brand new OS, get yourself in gear and make it happen. And in the meantime, shut your lips about when it’ll be available and how awesome it is. You’re only frustrating your loyalists and asking potential Android/Apple defectors to come and check out… well, nothing.

But rushing is just as fatal, which is the story of the PlayBook. No need to relive that nightmare, but you know the important parts: no email, no contacts, no calendar, no PlayBook owners. It’s quite simple: If it’s not ready, we don’t want it.

Neglect Developers

RIM is more than just your basic OEM. The company provides services and, to an extent, builds out its own software. It’s an ecosystem, which is what every electronics company strives to be. But RIM’s ecosystem is one with a serious lack of wildlife — a tundra, if you will. Especially compared to the jungle of iOS and Android.

Developers take what is usually a very fundamental system and make it do everything and anything. Without the App Store, my iPhone is actually quite limited. That’s what owning a BlackBerry is like.

Compared to two app stores with well over half a million apps each, RIM’s BlackBerry App World boasts just 38,363. Unfortunately, at least 5,000 of them are visual themes. RIM’s own services like BBM are great but compared to other platforms, such a small selection (even with BBM) is a tough sell.

The good news is that any app built for PlayBook 2.0 will also run on BB 10, so in that way, RIM can double up on developers. Still, you need developers to build before you can run their app on both tablets and smartphones, and if I were a developer I’d already have lost interest. RIM needs to take note of this and create some incentives quickly.

If you have an iPhone or Android device, there’s probably an app for that.

Ignore Employees

Perhaps the greatest mistake that former RIM leadership made was to ignore the folks that comprise the company. I say it may be the biggest because who knows what kind of mind-blowing ideas and game-changing opportunities RIM has passed up under old leadership. In the past year, numerous open letters from both curernt and ex-employees have pointed to the same thing, over and over again: Mike and Jim didn’t listen to the lower level.

RIM has plenty of young guns, I’m sure, who are much more in tune with what today’s consumer wants from their smartphone. In fact, many of them probably grew up in a world where mobile phones were ubiquitous and smartphones are the growing norm, which can’t be said for Mike, Jim, or Thorsten.

But that’s not really the point. The point is that every single one of his new employees will be looking to see if he’s Mike/Jim’s new puppet (especially after this morning’s comments). They’re all waiting, likely pregnant with ideas on how to better the company, to see if he’ll turn an ear to them or not.

Hopefully he’s got his listening ears on.

Follow

It’s easy to follow when you’re already behind, but Mr. Heins must resist. It would be easy to follow Apple and Android because that’s largely what the company has been doing since 2009, when it launched a competing app storefront a year after Apple launched the App Store. But I’m less worried about that.

After the comments he made earlier today, namely that no change is needed, it would seem that Heins is already on Lazaridis and Balsillie’s team. The problem is that they refused to look forward, instead focusing on their glorious past. By saying that no change is needed, Heins is basically agreeing with them and telling the board, investors, and BlackBerry owners that the company has no real plans to compete in this landscape.

While the spec is dead (and megapixels don’t really mean that much in terms of picture quality), I remember the names Titan 2 and Xperia S because HTC and Sony hooked up these phones with 16- and 12-megapixel sensors. In the past year every flagship has had an 8-megapixel camera, and while I don’t think that either of these phones are a huge upgrade, they’re still the first of their kind.

It wouldn’t hurt RIM to try to be first at something. The company has likely forgotten the feeling of being first, which means they’ve likely also forgotten the value of it.

But everyone, most importantly the consumer, loves to be first.

4 Things RIM’s New CEO Can Do to Fix the Company

Link

Peter Pachal

Research in Motion, better known as RIM, used to be one of the most dominating smartphone makers in the world. But it’s seen its market share — and reputation — flounder of late. So it wasn’t that surprising that the company finally did what many investors were asking for: get rid of its co-CEOs and replace them with a new leader, former COO Thorsten Heins.

Some are already saying that it’s too late for RIM, that mobile competitors Apple and Google are too far ahead, and that the company should essentially quit trying to market its own BlackBerry ecosystem and make some kind of soul-selling deal along the lines of Nokia‘s partnership with Microsoft. While that might be the best course of action, Heins has already said that getting the BlackBerry 10 (BB10) software and the next generation of phones out of the gate is his top priority. Short of some kind of surprise merger (Samsung? Microsoft?), it’s BB10 or bust for RIM.

Heins’ strategy is very risky considering the head-start RIM’s competitors have had, but it has the biggest long-term potential payoff. Make no mistake, though: RIM will have its work more than cut out for it when the first BB10 phones arrive later this year. Not only will it have to show that it has a platform as good as iOS orAndroid — it’ll also have to show that it has actual advantages over those other choices.

But RIM can’t do that if it continues to stumble like it has in recent years. Here are four things the company should do right the ship and and start sailing toward success.

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1. Narrow Your Focus

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RIM has had the mixed blessing of being both a go-to platform for enterprise customers, thanks to its devices’ utility and security, and a popular choice for many younger people because of the text- and tweet-friendly keyboard — not to mention that easy-on-the-cellphone-bill href=”http://mashable.com/follow/topics/blackberry-messenger/”>BlackBerry Messenger service. While having your products appeal to more than one demographic isn’t directly a problem per se, it appears to have dulled RIM’s focus somewhat.

This was seen most clearly in the PlayBook tablet, whose design and marketing was all over the map. It debuted without a native email client, requiring the user to pair it with his BlackBerry smartphone to use email. This, of course, presupposed that the person was a BlackBerry owner, and therefore likely a business user. Yet the marketing, advertising and even the name itself implied a tablet for “play,” putting things like gaming and video playback top priority. What?

I think that at some point RIM, tempted by the lure of being cool to “the kids,” started to push heavily in marketing to younger demographics, but the company has dulled its focus on its greatest strength: services and devices for enterprise and business. RIM should get back to emphasizing its roots by targeting business. If others recognize that those same products work for them personally as well, great. But first things first.

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2. Build a Better PlayBook

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I think it’s safe to say at this point that the BlackBerry PlayBook is a bona fide turkey in the history of tablet launches, and RIM needs to shift its attention to PlayBook 2 (not to be confused with PlayBook 2.0, the software update that will supposedly “fix” the original PlayBook). The second version of the company’s tablet must be in the works somewhere, even if it’s probably going to wait until BB10 is out before it has its debut.

PlayBook 2 needs to capitalize on RIM’s key strengths and be a true enterprise tablet. Ever since the AmazonKindle Fire launch there’s been a lot of pressure in the tablet market to take prices down to heretofore unseen lows. But RIM shouldn’t just go cheap — it needs to offer a tablet that will actually be useful for business.

RIM already has its back-end enterprise services to offer, but that’s a crutch. Heins needs to put himself in the mind of a business that isn’t all about BlackBerry already. What do RIM’s devices offer that business?

A new PlayBook could differentiate itself with something like near-field communication (NFC) to accept mobile payments. NFC actually has multiple uses, and so far no tablet has it. But that’s just one idea. More broadly, RIM needs to put aside the J Lo videos and Angry Birds and pack the hardware with features that businesses will actually use.

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3. Invest in Apps

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It will be a Herculean feat to attract significant developer interest in BlackBerry 10, and RIM’s going to need help. The recent move toward platform-agnostic HTML5 apps is helpful, but that helps everyone to some extent, so RIM can’t rely on it. And the stopgap measure of having the PlayBook run Android apps is a bad idea — it serves more to undermine RIM’s platform than help it. More direct action is called for.

App revenue sharing has largely settled on a 70/30 split between developers and OS makers, respectively. I’m not an economist, but it seems fairly arbitrary to me — what’s stopping RIM from giving an 80/20 cut? Or maybe a 100/0 cut for a limited time (say, the first 10,000 downloads)?

RIM also needs to hammer on the developer community that, while its market share may be dropping, it’s still significant. Add in some incentives like better revenue sharing, subsidies and better support than its competitors (and certainly less of a fragmented platform than Android) — developers will have a potentially great ROI on BB10.

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4. Resist Temptation to Fast-Track

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Probably the most egregious thing RIM’s done in recent years to shoot itself in the foot in recent years is push out products before they’re ready. This was most clear with the PlayBook, but the touchscreen BlackBerry Storm was a buggy mess when it was first released. Rumors abound of many more BlackBerry devices coming to carriers before they’re ready.

Ever since RIM announced that the first BB10 phones would be delayed until late 2012, the criticism has been unending, and there will be tremendous pressure on Heins to fast-track the devices for an earlier launch. But he shouldn’t. BlackBerry 10 and its accompanying devices need to be a hit right out of the gate if RIM is to have any hope of growing market share again. Heins has said he’ll abolish the practice of putting out half-baked products, and he should stick to it. If he accomplishes that at least, he’ll be well on his way to putting RIM’s shaky past behind it.