“In my earlier post about Research in Motion’s bitter earnings miss, I speculated that before investors rush off to sell their Apple shares in sympathy — worried that iPhone sales might also be slow too — they may want to study RIM’s reasons for its shortfall,” Jim Goldman writes for CNBC. “And that appears to be good advice.”
“On RIM’s conference call, it admitted that an enormous marketing push to fend off the coming iPhone onslaught was a key factor in the earnings miss,” Goldman writes.
“More specifically, RIM spent nearly $380 million on marketing and advertising its BlackBerry. It’s an enormous figure no one was counting on,” Goldman writes. “We had an inkling that costs might be on the rise, but certainly not something like this.”
“Bottomline: RIM is taking steps to ward off Apple. That’s the good news. The bad news for RIM, and the good news for Apple: That RIM has to spend this kind of money to try to get that job done. And it still didn’t work. Which means it’ll have to spend more next quarter,” Goldman writes. “Ouch.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Joe Architect” for the heads up.]
Bain de sang.