“If investors in Research In Motion thought in January that a change in leadership at the struggling maker of BlackBerry smartphones would solve its problems, Thorsten Heins, the new chief executive, has so far proved them wrong,” Paul Taylor reports for The Financial Times.
“Mr Heins has taken the tough measures that Wall Street considered necessary, cutting costs and streamlining operations, but the share price continues to fall below the 12-month low it reached on Wednesday,” Taylor reports. “The reality, as he has warned repeatedly, is that it was always going to be tough for RIM to bridge the gap between its ageing BlackBerry smartphone portfolio and its next-generation handset range that is not expected to reach stores until much later this year.”
Taylor reports, “But the rapid deterioration in RIM’s profit, highlighted by Tuesday’s warning of an operating loss in the three months ending June 2 , has surprised all but the most pessimistic analysts.”
Read more in the full article here.
The former Co-CEO’s of RIM didn’t move to wear the puck was going to be because they could not see it.
Their one trick pony had done its trick and has now been put in the barn wet, having been ridden hard by Apple! The only thing left is to shut the door.
Or off to the Glue Factory!
I wonder if one of the co’s is happy to have saved his money by not getting the Phoenix Coyotes to move near Waterloo?
I would have some sympathy for RIM (but they probably would not need my sympathy), if they had not jumped on the Copy-Apple bandwagon with the RIM Play-Book, and then had the nerve to advertise their fake iPad as the professional tablet.
If RIM had just stuck to their strengths, and built on them, the unfavourable comparisons to Apple products might never have happened.
And now, RIM is running Blackberry TV ads that make fun of virtual keyboards – Wow, RIM – way to highlight who the leader is in the smartphone market!
My unsolicited business advice;
Shut up and make awesome products that your customers will love.
Repeat.
You have my attention. What is this “RIMM” of which you speak?
R I M’s stock symbol.
So is amateur hour over yet, RIM?
No? Okay, I’ll wait – can’t be too much longer.
lol good one
It won’t be much of a wait now.
They need a leader with a killer instinct so I would propose that all remaining managers at RIMM get aboard a chartered airliner with an open bar and duke it out for top dog while at cruising altitude.
They got a leader with suicidal instincts. The plane is on autopilot with no one in the cockpit; the plane is rapidly losing altitude, but no one on the plane seems to notice. 🙂
The staggering thing is that the iPhone is less than 5 years old (launch 29th of June). And in that time RIM, Nokia, Palm and Motorola have imploded under the pressure.
Instead of “skating to where the puck is going to be be” Jim Balsillie spent his time trying to buy various hockey teams. The irony is exquisite.
I wish MacDailyNews would quit adding “Beleaguered” as a prefix to RIM in every headline about the company. We know! We know! They’re struggling! I’m not a Blackberry user, but the company has done some great things in the past, and is only now posting their first negative quarter since 2004. Yes, they have a very steep climb ahead to reinvent themselves, but do none of you gloaters recall Apple pre-Steve Jobs return in the late 1990’s? Building and running a multinational with 16,000+ employees in such a fiercely competitive industry is a huge task. Remind me again, which one is it that you run? Competition is good for this industry and for consumers. If we end up with nothing but Apple, Samsung, Google and Facebook, God help us.
It’s meant as an ongoing very intentional joke, because the popular media in the late 1990’s (even early 2000’s) so predictably used the word “beleaguered” to describe Apple, while companies like RIM, Dell, and Microsoft could apparently do no wrong.
> do none of you gloaters recall Apple pre-Steve Jobs return in the late 1990′s?
It’s exactly BECAUSE we remember that MDN does this…
And “competition is good” only if the competition is actually any good. RIM is not competing very well.
are you new here?
Can anyone give me one reason why I or anyone else should care about RIM? Good riddance!
RIM was really the one company that could have threatened Apple (and iPhone), because RIM (like Apple) controls the entire product experience, from hardware to software, and they still have (or “had”) a large and loyal user base. The others… Palm/HP (WebOS) is gone, and Nokia is now married to Microsoft. The Android collective is really what Apple wants as the only other viable mobile platform, because Android is fragmented, predictable, and “safe” (much like Windows in the PC world). If it’s iOS versus Android, Apple makes most of the profit.
Two years ago, with smarter leadership, RIM could have done something significant to compete with Apple. Maybe they still can, but NOW they need their version of “Steve Jobs” to pull off an Apple-like comeback. That’s looking more and more unlikely every day. However, RIM is certainly not gone, not yet (so it’s too early to say “good riddance”). RIM is Apple’s only remaining competitor (of significance) with complete control over the entire product experience, from hardware to software (unless you count the newly hatched “Googlerola”). If you care about Apple, that’s why you should still “care about RIM” (at least for a while longer).
Thanks for that kenw1, I take on board your sentiments and appreciate the effort that went into your response to my rather flippant post.