RIM death watch

[Bateluer]

Do you really believe this GBR article?

Wouldn't be the first time a company has ignored user feedback.

 

[Pliablemoose]

Do you really believe this GBR article?

BGR is actually wired into RIMM, I believe them.

 

[Imp]

Do these idiots even bother to read reviews on their own products? Some of the biggest complaints with the Playbook were the lack of native email and calendar apps.

We're about 3 months now from the one year aniversary of the Playbook release: still no first party e-mail or calendar.

Thanks RIM, you've inspired me to open a short-trading account - probably too late to short RIM itself though...

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

Rim dont give a crap about Europe or The USA because theyre selling like hotcakes in Africa. Thats more buyers than US and Europe put together. You can sell a thing for cheap and sell a crapload and make a fortune or you could sell a few expensive ones and fail in a couple of years.

 

[Pliablemoose]

Rim dont give a crap about Europe or The USA because theyre selling like hotcakes in Africa. Thats more buyers than US and Europe put together. You can sell a thing for cheap and sell a crapload and make a fortune or you could sell a few expensive ones and fail in a couple of years.

Exactly, that's why they blew half a billion dollars on the PlayBook and QNX.


:hmm:

 

[Imp]

Rim dont give a crap about Europe or The USA because theyre selling like hotcakes in Africa. Thats more buyers than US and Europe put together. You can sell a thing for cheap and sell a crapload and make a fortune or you could sell a few expensive ones and fail in a couple of years.

Cheap phones sold to Africans living in poverty versus high margin phones sold to Americans with too much credit that have to follow every trend and sometimes swap phones a few times a years?

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

Exactly, that's why they blew half a billion dollars on the PlayBook and QNX.

Share price on Jan. 4: $59.02
Share price on Jan. 31: $58.99

Share price on Dec. 19: $13.53

Yeah that and the BBX delay. They made the age old mistake by trying to get their fat little fingers in every pie in the market. And they tried to compete with two huge establish companies and lost. If they concentrated on making their Blackberry devices better like replacing that crappy OS their used and aim them where there is a huge demand for their devices then it wouldve gone better. People in 3rd world countries just want a phone to phone text and email as well as connect to the net. Thats where nokia made a buck. In the old days people had competition to see who can install the most useless apps on their phone. And there were many. And nokia sold symbian phones like hell. Rim doesnt even have that with the blackberries.

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

Cheap phones sold to Africans living in poverty versus high margin phones sold to Americans with too much credit that have to follow every trend and sometimes swap phones a few times a years?

A blackberry is in the avg africans price range. They are really cheap over here and the networks put them together with nice and cheap packages. Like the free internet thing if you use the Blackberry browser. Thats all that people want. They want to connect to the internet. Now i mean the USA has lot of diversity and a lot of carriers. In Africa one or two carriers are in each country. I mean if you take Nigeria.

Thats the population of Nigeria and theres two carriers providing a service to them. 158,423,180. The cheapest data plans is the blackberry. Remember Internet here is about 10 times more than in the USA. (In my country I'm not from Nigeria btw) Browsing with the Blackberry browser is free.Like dropping a free KFC in Ethopia.

The primary purpose is instant accessibility with a Blackberry. International roaming and thats what a Blackberry provide also so 99 percent of the businesses provides their top level management with Blackberries to have that feature. Rim are not selling it to the customer one by one. They sell it to carriers and such in bulk.

 

[Pliablemoose]

Cheap Android phones are going to kill RIMM in those markets.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

Cheap Android phones are going to kill RIMM in those markets.

This. Sales in poorer countries have kept RIM's earnings up for a while but once Android phones get cheap enough they will eat RIM's lunch again. It's not a sustainable strategy.

 

[mammador]

Rim dont give a crap about Europe or The USA because theyre selling like hotcakes in Africa. Thats more buyers than US and Europe put together. You can sell a thing for cheap and sell a crapload and make a fortune or you could sell a few expensive ones and fail in a couple of years.

Europe, the US, Japan, Oceania, etc. are the world's most lucrative markets.

How many people in Africa can afford a BB Torch? In the third world, the issue is feature phones and dual sim, something RIM doesn't touch really.

I don't feel sorry for RIM, for a multi-national they clearly have shitty marketing policies and a crappy strategic intent/direction. When Android rose and iOS became embedded, RIM simply stood still and did nothing. The difference in functionality between a BB phone and even a mid-range Android is like night and day. If I were RIM CEO, I would simply hop on the Android bandwagon, and hold developmental control over BBM. Simply licence it out to Google and the other Android carriers (Samsung, HTC, Motorola/Google and the rest).

 

[mammador]

It's funny, they are still profitable, still make money every quarter, and still ship millions of devices each quarter, yet people say they are toast. Look at AMD and how long they're around. RIM today isn't RIM of 1 year ago, but they're no AMD.

Market share has fallen relative to competitors.

Most in the industry view their products as shitty, again relative to competitors.

Yes, they are profitable, but that is not the only measure of organisational success. As market share is falling, especially from a very high position, then it stands to reason that some serious strategic moves need to be made. RIM could survive, but as a bit player dominated by Google and Apple in the OS side and Samsung, Motorola, HTC, Apple, Nokia, etc. in terms of handset/build quality. If I were a RIM shareholder that would not satisfy me, despite dominating the smartphone marketplace only until a couple of years ago.

 

[lothar]

A blackberry is in the avg africans price range. They are really cheap over here and the networks put them together with nice and cheap packages. Like the free internet thing if you use the Blackberry browser. Thats all that people want. They want to connect to the internet. Now i mean the USA has lot of diversity and a lot of carriers. In Africa one or two carriers are in each country. I mean if you take Nigeria.

Thats the population of Nigeria and theres two carriers providing a service to them. 158,423,180. The cheapest data plans is the blackberry. Remember Internet here is about 10 times more than in the USA. (In my country I'm not from Nigeria btw) Browsing with the Blackberry browser is free.Like dropping a free KFC in Ethopia.

The primary purpose is instant accessibility with a Blackberry. International roaming and thats what a Blackberry provide also so 99 percent of the businesses provides their top level management with Blackberries to have that feature. Rim are not selling it to the customer one by one. They sell it to carriers and such in bulk.

Absolute nonsense.
Everything you've said about Blackberry, and Nigeria is simply not true.
The only reason people use Blackberry is BBM, along with lack of education.
iMessage and GTalk can do the same thing BBM does. However you have to get BBM because all your friends have BBM.

The moment people realize that or whenever Blackberry ports BBM to iOS and Android like they suggested they might, the gravy train will stop.

 

[Arkaign]

Cheap Android phones are going to kill RIMM in those markets.

Logic! You are a thousand percent correct.

 

[thescreensavers]

Why not Apple?

Why not Microsoft?

RIM needs to do something different, anything they are going to put out that follows what they been doing for the past few years will fail.

 

[Bateluer]

The moment people realize that or whenever Blackberry ports BBM to iOS and Android like they suggested they might, the gravy train will stop.

Pfft. By the time they get around to doing that, everyone on iOS will be using iMessenger and everyone on Android will be using gTalk.

 

[Pliablemoose]

RIM needs to do something different, anything they are going to put out that follows what they been doing for the past few years will fail.

There was an awesome post on Apple Insider forums about the process of software quality control and how RIM could sort out QNX, I honestly don't know what the hell RIM thinks it's doing with QNX, but it's wrong.

You really don't appreciate the attention to detail that iOS and Android OS's have until you work with something that isn't sorted out. QNX is pretty massive fail at this point.

 

[The-Noid]

Pliablemoose: are you short rimm stock?

 

[Pliablemoose]

Pliablemoose: are you short rimm stock?

Nah, I don't short stocks, I do occasionally buy a leveraged negative ETF if I have some cash laying around and the market is tanking.

I started this thread because I was trying to explain to a fan of BB that the company was in trouble, and kept running into a brick wall trying to explain what was going to eventually happen.

Android will eventually do to the phone market what Windows did to desktop/laptop OS's, essentially completely dominate the sector, unless Google screws the pooch.

There isn't a good "pure play" on Android OS'd phones, so I like Apple stock at the moment, and have made a ton of cash just buying & selling it on the highs and lows. I think we'll see a nice bump in Apple stock in the next 2 weeks in the run up to earnings.

I do tend to favor the underdog, and have switched to primarily Apple stuff since starting this thread, but have a couple of Android tablets, a PlayBook and just got a Republic Wireless phone that hops on & off WiFi with nlimited everything for $19/month (it's still in beta, and I'm enjoying playing with the new business model device)

I drag a Verizon iPhone 4, an HTC Flyer 7" tablet, and the LG Republic Wireless phone around every day. Am hoping BB sorts out the PlayBook eventually, I like the hardware, but the OS is crap...

 

[CZroe]

I would buy a PlayBook RIGHT NOW if they promised to unlock the bootloader and allow Android. I would also use QNX just like I also use WebOS. The increased usage would draw enough interest to improve its survivability chances. It seems to me that this is a stronger option than the guaranteed failure a TouchPad-like firesale would cause.

If HP did the same instead of cutting the price before Android was hacked on there, not only would it have given WebOS a fighting chance, but they could have factored the value of Android into the firesale price and lost much less money.

 

[Pliablemoose]

Who in the hell signed off on this pricing structure?

All of the PlayBooks are now $299 16, 32, and 64GB models? WTF???

https://store.shopblackberry.com/Product/BlackBerry-PlayBook/PRD-38548-001

And the co-CEO's may not be co board chairmen soon...

http://allthingsd.com/20120103/rim-co-ceos-may-lose-co-chairmen-roles/?refcat=news

 

[Imp]

Who in the hell signed off on this pricing structure?

All of the PlayBooks are now $299 16, 32, and 64GB models? WTF???

https://store.shopblackberry.com/Product/BlackBerry-PlayBook/PRD-38548-001

And the co-CEO's may not be co board chairmen soon...

http://allthingsd.com/20120103/rim-co-ceos-may-lose-co-chairmen-roles/?refcat=news

Strategy to eliminate all models except the 16Gb? You'd be stupid to get the 16 or 32 over the 64 unless they were out of stock. Or prelude to an actual firesale?

 

[Lifted]

Strategy to eliminate all models except the 16Gb? You'd be stupid to get the 16 or 32 over the 64 unless they were out of stock. Or prelude to an actual firesale?

They still won't sell.

 

[Imp]

They still won't sell.

Ya, I read somewhere (great source) that they sold only 500k during the past few fire sales.

 

[Pheran]

RIM shares jump on talk of possible sale to Samsung

Samsung flat-out denied it though, so this may be nothing more than wild speculation.

Also, Samsung's not going to buy RIM