La Monica writes, “That brings us to Research in Motion.”
MacDailyNews Take: Ouch.
La Monica continues, “Shares of the BlackBerry smartphone maker have been crushed in the past few weeks, due largely to concerns that its hotly anticipated new Torch phone is not selling as well as hoped. Research in Motion shares have plunged more than 15% just this month and are barely above their 52-week low.”
“Investors are worried that tech consumers only have eyes for Apple and its iPhone, and to a lesser extent, some of the many smartphones that run on Google’s Android operating system, such as the HTC Evo and Motorola’s various Droid phones,” La Monica. “Possible bans of BlackBerry services by the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and India over security concerns may also be weighing on the stock.”
La Monica writes, “Some worry that there are eerie similarities between Research in Motion and Palm, the once-hot smartphone maker that failed to keep up with Apple, Research in Motion and others… Chris Bulkey, an analyst with Technology Research Group in Narberth, Pa., said Research in Motion could suffer the same fate. For now, the company’s sales and profits are still growing, but the pace is slowing. And without a hot product on the horizon, Bulkey, who has a ‘sell’ rating on the stock, said it’s hard to envision a bright future for Research in Motion.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: RIM is a dead company walking.
Survival of the fittest.
but Palm really screwed up. it stopped advancing and dumped its Palm OS for … Windows Mobile! that was suicide. then a new generation of leadership (ex Apple) got it back on track with WebOS, but it was just too late to save it.
RIM is trying to advance its BB OS, not let it wither like that. not saying it will be a big hit, but if RIM can just hang on to a dependable chunk of the market it will do ok, if not great. for the kyboard button addicts.
but yeah i’d sell its stock now. it’s peaked.
OH POOR RIM. GOOD RIDDANCE! JUNK!
I AM SO SICK OF THIS BS!
WHEN ARE PEOPLE GONNA WAKE UP!
AAPL LONG!!!! GOOD GRIEF!
Buy 1 POS and get 8 POS free. Then they can brag about all those units moving or sold kinda sorta. lol
@ John E
And RIM may follow Palm’s example, except release a Android-based phone this time around…
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RIM could do a couple of Android phones to test the waters and to figure out how to do touch screens right.
At the very least they could write it all off as research.
What defines RIM except for its proprietary lock-in network? Without that, it has nothing to differentiate itself. I agree that leveraging Android would be beneficial, rather than being held back by its current archaic operating system, but how would they transition all of the custom-built apps? Nasty situation.
I think it’ll continue to win over corporate customers for some time, but on the consumer front, it doesn’t have a chance. It’s a mistake for them to try until they have a solid consumer product.
I wonder how Obama’s crew is going to help him transition to an iPhone 4 from his doomed BB?
They were king for a long time. The got complacent. Apple innovates while BB thought they had it locked up.
The scary thing for RIM is that Palm actually came out with a much better OS than RIM has for its Blackberry devices. Palm was dogged by hardware quality issues and a scary marketing campaign.
Let’s think of some new acronyms for a name change:-
RNIM – Research Not In Motion
BRIM – Bad Research In Motion
any other takes?
I personally think rumors of RIM’s death are greatly exaggerated. I’ve seen tons of articles saying the same things about Apple- and they’re equally wrong.
By the way, Obama has been a Mac user far longer than he’s used a Blackberry. I think he’d adjust easily.
right ken1t. if RIM tries to be one more Android shop, that would be suicide. would be just one of many in a cutthroat price race to the bottom. its own “walled garden” is the one real advantage it has. well, there is another. there really ARE button addicts out there who just have to have that BB keyboard and practically live on it. i know some, don’t you?
NUTS. – Loco- Motion
RIM has a lot of enterprise services that aren’t found on any other platforms right now. Any company that has invested on the back end isn’t going to sacrifice all that time and money just because the phones aren’t as popular with the consumer crowd.
What RIM needs to do, is build applications for other platforms that can take advantage of that back end software. If they can’t save their devices, they might as well try and save their IT business, which is probably where most of their money is made anyway.
New acronym for RIM:
RIP (Rest in Peace)
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The decline of Rim and failure of WebOS (if HP can’t revive it) is bad news for Apple imo. If competitors decline the market will become iPhone vs Android, and marketshare will be tipped heavily in Android’s favour, due to greater choice (1 iPhone model + last years discounted), and price – apple aiming high end. This then makes Android a better platform to develop for – see Mac v Windows. Being much better isn’t always enough. Apple can compete much better in a fragmented OS market, than against every other company running Android.
kevt is right. Apple is best served by a diverse phone OS market in which it can shine as a premium brand. The last thing Apple wants is all the competition lining up behind Android. That’s why Apple never sued Palm for the Pre, but instead sued HTC for Android.
Free RIM job w/ every phone!
The big difference between RIM and Palm is that RIM has a large portion of the corporate market locked up – at least for now. Palm was there in the early days but when they did not advance RIM came in and took the corporate stuff. Therefore RIM is in a lot better situation then Palm was.
Now of course RIM has no desire from the consumer market so that is a long term problem they need to address – much like Microsoft.
“Some worry that there are eerie similarities between Research in Motion and Palm, the once-hot smartphone maker that failed to keep up with Apple, Research in Motion and others…”
Hmmm, I guess RIM failed to keep up with themselves…
1 part yesterday’s lacklustre products + 1 part badly-implemented iPhone imitation = 2 bad for the Blackberry.
Still the myth that Android is strong, even though no-one makes money with it. Android will persist by virtue of that free thing and eventually all the profitless iPhone wannabes will coalesce around it, unless of course Oracle succeeds with their suit.
m159:
it’s interesting that you bring up the Oracle suit. I was just about to forget about it… as I’ve forgot about Apple’s suit against HTC.. and so-and-so’s suit against whoever.
whatever hapens with these suits? anyone know? something must happen but we rarely hear shit about it.
any IP lawyers in the house?
RIM will be around for a long time. They’ll never be number one, but offering functional social smartphones for $0 on a contract is still enticing to the average person who doesn’t know the difference between megabyte and a wagawatt.
Blackberries still outnumber iPhones among my social group, work crowd and random people on the street 5 to 1 where I live.