“Analysts at Needham & Co. on Wednesday downgraded their rating on Research In Motion (RIMM) to underperform from hold, citing “explosive” sales of rival Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) iPhone,” Michelle Donley reports for MarketWatch.
“‘Apple and RIM are not engaged in a zero-sum game,’ they wrote. ‘Nonetheless, the iPhone is bound to cut into Blackberry’s incredible growth in the consumer smartphone market,'” Donley reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Investor” for the heads up.]
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Respect to RIM. One of the very few worthy Apple competitors.
what are the qualifications of being an analysts? Do you just need to be able to state the obvious?
and therefore the stock goes … down
shortsighted analysis. while everyone wants to focus on Bold vs iPhone at the higher end of the market, RIM is positioning itself to go after the 500 mln plus annual units in the middle of the cell mkt between low end crap/free phones and high end smartphones. this will unfold over the next year as RIM does two things: releases more models cheaper than ever, and works with carriers to offer more flexible data pricing. patience.
I have said it before and I will say it again…RIM is a good company and I hope that they and Apple will fully control the market. In that way they can compete and out-do each other and we as consumers…WIN!
The analyst said iPhone would cut RIM’s growth in the consumer smartphone market.
The key words here are growth and consumer.
Business was not mentioned. Consumers will want world class internet browsing. Mediocre e-mail is good enough for them. The right consumer choice is the iPhone. RIM is all about business. RIM does not make an adequate consumer smart phone yet.
Explosive, like swallowing 1,000mcg of Cytotec at once.
Personally speaking, I do not agree that RIM was a serious competitor to apple. I’ve using BlackBerries from long time because I am obligated to use a secondary communication alternative by the ITIL regulations. But the only thing that BB has different from other pones is the use of the corporate email, I a very limited way(almost no attachments of any kind. I have 8 month with the iPhone and I do not see any reason of why we need to back to the crappy BBs. Even tha battery sucks a lot more in the RIM’s devices.
BBs were popular because there were no other device with corporate email, but now with the new iPhone 2.0 with Cisco VPN, you no longer need a BB server or License for each device. So why will anybody use a BB again? May be if you use the Nextel Radio, besides that, I do not see any reason.
My page width just snapped wide open and now the font is so tiny, I need a magnifier to read it!
Not having my morning coffee yet may also be the source of my font-challenged messages. (^_^)
Blackberry has a BIG problem.
It announced this year it has 14m subscribers and will likely sell 17m devices in 2008. The modern Blackberry came into being in 2002, six long years ago.
Apple iPhone comes along and sells 10m (likely nearer 12m) in its first full year.
Don’t tell me that the iPhone selling 60 to 70% of the number of BB’s in one year is not a MAJOR blow.
They had better make a god job of the Bold or Thunder or whatever…and making the Comic Sans the font sure is not a great start either.
macaday, your numbers of rim device sales is off – they sold 5.4 mln in their first quarter and will grow from there. so it’s probably closer to 22 mln in 2008. no doubt iphone’s 2008 sales is amazing to end up selling more than 1/2 of rim despite rim being in the biz for a number of years more. BUT you also should consider the maturity of the smartphone mkt in general. if this was a few years ago, these numbers wold be dramatically smaller.
This page’s formatting has gone from insane to ludicrous.
Problem with Blackberries is that it has NO consumer market. All are corporate assigned ball-and-chain addicted to only by workaholics. Actual smart phones people pay out of their own pocket for are more likely to be Treos, which were overpriced compared to iPhone 3G now. Once iPhones takes hold on the consumer market, it’ll be lights out in that segment for RIM and Palm.
Last night was the only time I saw a BB commercial on TV, and it shows an animated baby on it – a CG BABY? Without showing much of what a BB does? And you gotta love the Instinct commercial – thieves (what does that tell you?) driving in a getaway car using a GPS equipped phone? The same *intelligence* probably goes on in the management of these companies.
What RIM will do is what Microsoft does best. Copy. I expect them to release that Thunder as quickly as possible and will ape most of the iPhone. How do they get away with such things? Specially if Apple 200 plus patents are approved.
Investors should be pulling money out of RIM and investing in rehab centers to cure them of their crackberries!
Badaboom! (RIM-shot)
Thank you, thank you! I’m here all week.
Do people really need analysts to tell them this kind of stuff? Oh look, the sky has clouded over, maybe I should phone an expert somewhere to see what that means…
It’s called the “DingleBerry”
Sure to be a hit with young male adolescents!
Some of you users are amusing. This is related to STOCK performance which doesn’t really impact growth. If you are a large enterprise and want the most secure mobile platform it’s blackberry. Period. Yeah iphone does ActiveSync and has 2 policies. Where is device management? Usage reporting? Policy to lock down certain functionality? Not there .. it’s a consumer device and Apple can have that. Last I looked I saw plenty of soccer mom’s touting Pearls and Curves.
There is a thing called personal preference / cost limitations and for now while Iphone is hyped and a slick device it’s a niche. 225,000 sales in the US isn’t THAT impressive and please don’t go on and on how they COULD have sold thousands more .. they barely kept they systems up and had plenty of outages. Itunes is Apple’s NOC and will limit the iphone adapation in the Enterprise.
Blackberry CAN support attachments and I am willing to bet the majority of you were using 7280/7290 and not the latest 8800 or Curve devices so ANY device would look sexier compared to that. Go work for a company that puts some thought and planning into mobility before talking out of your iAss.
You are right CrazyLegs, I may well be out a bit. But I don’t think the rest of the year will be as bright for RIM. For one, they are promising all sort’s of new products that may or may not materialise which will impact sales.
Read this item from today:
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200807161144DOWJONESDJONLINE000656_FORTUNE5.htm
more commentary on this same new here:
http://www.9to5mac.com/node/1025
[Needham & Co analyst] Wolf doesn’t believe RIM can match this. “It’s the superb integration of hardware and Apple’s OS X operating system that makes the device one of a kind. BlackBerry’s Java development tools are primitive in comparison. In our opinion, RIM has no hope of catching up on the software front, which promises to be the next battleground in the smartphone market,” he writes.
People will soon get tired of these flashy, toylike phones. The long lines, and supply outages of the super beautiful, utilitarian and innovative ZunePhone will tell the real story of Apple’s I-Phone blunder. Only MAC sheep could get excited about a flashy phone without a keyboard. Dorks.
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