Goldman Sachs cut its rating on the stock to “neutral” from “buy,” citing doubts about the company’s ability to maintain market share in North America.
“‘In addition, a second consecutive decline in international sales tempers our expectations for share gains overseas,’ Goldman analyst Simona Jankowski wrote in a note to clients,” Rocha and John McCrank report. “Brokerage firm Raymond James also cut its rating on RIM to ‘market perform’ from ‘outperform.’
“Phillip Huang, an analyst at UBS, maintained a ‘neutral’ rating on RIM, saying its shares will likely be range-bound until the company can show stronger top line momentum,” Rocha and John McCrank report. “He added that ‘sentiment could be muted near-term due to increasing competition & a potential relationship between Apple and Verizon Wireless.'”
Full article here.
What does RIMM have? A one-category business product line with some diverse choices within that one-categy, but WHERE is their
true consumer touch device? What they have out there now has a 50% return rate and is cumbersome. They’ve had year to get good apps out there, and in 15 months, Apple has 77,000. RIMM CEO’s should be taken to task on their long term vision. They are only evolving in one area without a real game changer like the iPhone is.
‘sentiment could be muted near-term due to increasing competition & a potential relationship between Apple and Verizon Wireless.’
Verizon: Get rid of iTunes and your app store, and use our VCast thingy instead.
Apple: HAHAHA no. You guys are dumb pipes, just carry whatever data our users want you to carry.
Verizon: No.
Apple: Well, fine then.
Verizon: Well, fine then!
…not much “potential” in that relationship.
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RIMM’m the bowl, headed for a down turn?
Maybe, it would not take much for RIMM to start sliding into the Palm Zone. Another bad quality poor designed product or two and it could be a serious sales killer for RIMM. They need to focus on their core product and core market, stop chasing Apple and the mass consumer market, Think of smart phone market and who is leading and driving innovation. Apple is the lead dog in the sled dog team, the view never never changes for the rest of the dogs.
Verizon seems to have perfected their FUD game with the internet media. You almost have to feel sorry for Sprint & RIM.
We haven’t heard very much about the technical details of the Storm 2, which is supposed to be arriving next month. Hmmm…
RIM’s next move is to copy Apple more. The more they copy, the more they will lose as Apple is years ahead technology-wise. Apple is holding back much tech to kill off competitors in the future.
*sigh* As always, day-to-day stock prices are practically meaningless. I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve watched AAPL dive off a cliff for less reason than that. The price is basically decided by hedge funds and are nearly unaffected by the products. In real outlook, long term Trends are what matters. Google “RIMM” and look at their YTD trend. RIMM’s trend is doing just fine.
@ Dallasm – The difference is that, in RIM’s case, the stock is down sharply because they missed analyst expectations and projections in key areas – something Apple hasn’t done recently. So it could very well be a long-term indicator for RIM, and not the temporary blip you imply.
@ Dallasm — Click on the May 27, 2009 link above, a devastating InfoWorld review of the Blackberry in comparison to the iPhone.
Okay, I looked, I’m a little surprised to see they’ve had three big drops this year. Mid-Feb, mid-June and now. Hmmm…are those reporting periods for RIM? The mid-June was probably. The mid-Feb, was that year-end? Interesting.
As for YTD, Rim is up 70%, while Apple is up 115%.
RIM’s problem is that they are basically a “one-trick pony” whose core business is corporate clients.
As the iPhone and Android get more and more capable of acceptance in the corporate market, RIM’s market share will inevitably shrink.
And it crosses no ones mind that the market plays with forecasts to drive the stock price where they want to pad their own coffers .. I’m sure every analyst snaps up a good chunk of RIM shares everytime they “fall off a cliff” and then sells when they reach a profit point. Rinse / Repeat.
Roger you might want to read the other great articles on Infoworld slamming Apple on their iPhone security around ActiveSync.
Pot meet Kettle.
let’s step back from all for the tit-for-tat comparisons and look the big picture. while people cite how steve jobs has attention to detail, he seems to really have that in the context of the big picture. no one else seems to be able to have that combination. they don’t even copy apple’s attention to detail well and they totally lack the big picture.
instead of trying to predict where smartphones are going, (none of us is really smart enough to understand how this is going to evolve), let’s examine what happened to portable music players. apple basically entered an evolving (slowly) market and redefined the device with a combination of function and access to content that changed the market to what it is today. it is basically your window to most of the world of music (any way you want it-except subscription). by defining the new market, rather than trying to satisfy every complaint about what it does not have, apple quietly changed the game. music players became your personal music environment. that’s they way SJ envisioned it and that’s they way it happened. when you can see that clearly, you are less distracted by things that are not material to the objective. their reward is dominance. they did not set out to dominate. they set out to change the game. that is the basic difference between apple and all of the “chasers”. that’s why market share, in in some respects margins are not critical drivers for apple. they just innovate and they expect to be rewarded for innovation. now people like steve balmer are left with claiming that apple is dominant in a “niche” industry. apple innovated to the top and will remain there until the “niche” gets replaced by something else. isn’t it interesting that apple, and no one else seems to be preparing for that day?
smartphones are like music players in 2001. people talk about the market evolving. apple has already changed it from a smart phone to a mobile environment. when people say they are years ahead, it is the environment that is years ahead. it uses technology, but is is not about technology. i am excited to watch where this leads.
we need to remember that while apple still sells computers, it is not the company that it used to be. SJ has grown with the company and they seem to be about changing how we deal with technology more than about fighting microsoft. SJ even said as much a few years back, we just did not understand what he meant. it is becoming a little clearer now.
we are just beginning to see the companies that are the new model and the ones that are the old. Apple is one of the new and RIMM is one of the old. maybe we should start a new category of company-the walking dead.