“Needham analyst Charlie Wolf [has cut] his rating on the stock to Hold from Buy, while chopping his FY 2012 EPS forecast for the company to $6 from $7.35, well below management’s own forecast of at least $7.50 a share,” Eric Savitz reports for Forbes.
“Wolf writes in a research note that the BlackBerry maker has largely been a ‘one-trick pony, delivering the gold standard in messaging services,'” Savitz reports. “But he contends ‘that’s no longer enough,’ that consumer want phones that provide a broad range of software and services.”
The company, he believes, has not responded to the challenge posed by Apple and Android – and he blames management for the company’s woes,'” Savitz reports. “‘In the absence of adult supervision, RIM has been unable to respond,’ he writes. ‘Unfortunately, RIM’s skills as a hardware manufacturers have been more than offset by its ineptness in software development, the focus of competition today. The blame must be laid at the feet of the company’s Co-CEOs [Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie] who in their actions and words, appear to have no clue on how to mount a successful response.’ …Wolf is less than optimistic about the prospects for the PlayBook, the company’s entry into the tablet market. He notes that there were no reports of lines anywhere when the device went on sale. And he adds that the early evidence is ‘not encouraging.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: DCW.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward W.” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Jefferies analysts: ‘We were wrong’ about RIM; downgrades to ‘underperform’ – April 29, 2011
Research In Motion warns of weak BlackBerry sales; shares plunge – April 29, 2011
Just forget RIMM!!
Buy AAPL as it will go to $422 by December!
2012 = $523
2015 = $828 🙂
Too many facts and record profits still to come.
Suck it RIM.
RIM is like that homeless hobo you see in the streets or that bag lady rummaging through your trash can muttering to herself something unintelligible. Maybe they were star athletes once, who knows? But now they have to rummage through trash cans looking for scraps to eat. That’s RIM – the homeless guy rummaging around for scraps that other phone manufacturers leave behind.
It looks like the RIM growth story will only be a factor in Africa where I suppose Colonel Gaddhafi thinks it’s cool to hold a Blackberry to his ear while NATO bombs are falling all around him. Can you say RIM’s incredible shrinking market story? Honey, I shrunk my market share!
“In the absence of adult supervision, RIM has been unable to respond” WOW — them are some strong words of condemnation! It does not say much for their board.
RIM “It does not say much for their board.”
Unfortunately, other than at HP & Apple & similar, few pay attention to the board of director members at smaller companies.
Too often they are friends of the founder, CEO, CFO, etc. and rubber stamped at the shareholder meetings.
Would be interesting to see a story on the board members of RIM. Celebrities, a CEO of a cement company, lumber company, and an accountant?
It must be frustrating for Canadians to always be outdone and outclassed by their superior neighbors to the south.
Agreed. They will never best our civil war, for instance.
@ Mister Grady
What a stupid comment!
Idiot! No wonder America gets a bad rap around the world. Rednecks like yourself forget that a whole other world exists that is just as capable and just as free as America.
if RIM goes down, it won’t be good for Apple or iOS. Let’s look at this more carefully.
Whether we like it or not, the iPhone won’t take the majority spot. That’s where Android will be. But with other serious competition vacant, Android could take up a 70% marketshare, or more, eventually. That won’t be great for Apple.
But if RIM is strong, and somehow, Nokia and WP7 make it, there will be no one system taking more than 50% of the market. That’s better for Apple. We should hope that HP’s WebOS also survives.