What went wrong at RIM?
 

Was reading the National Post and this was one of the main headlines

long read but pretty interesting
What went wrong at RIM? | FP Tech Desk | Financial Post

http://financialpostbusiness.files.w...011/07/rim.gif

im a bb user myself and i see alot of people use it, never thought the company was going down so fast, i guess apple and android is kicking their ass atm

Business Forum.

The "failing" argument is only valid starting from around mid 2009. anything before that was pretty much the picture for the entire technology sector, if not the entire market.

but yeah, they are on their way down because simply - the market they used to own is no longer theirs.

really wish android fanboys would stop posting blackberry stuff in the offtopic forum so they can be like "OH EM GEE WE R HERD!!! TOLD U SO!!!
"

I feel RIM was able to grab that extra market share they typically would not have gotten, which is the average user. Once they got the average user, they never really tried to keep them. Now with all the options available, the average user is going iphone/android.

Still feel their primary market which is email/business is always going to be there. Just don't see them holding on the other markets anymore.

They tried - starting with the Pearl. But the other options were just better for the consumers. Especially with the advent of Android based Cell Phones. Individuals like you who say they did not try to capture the mass consumer even though they did just shows how the BB device was just not looked at a favourable light anymore.

Then again, when RIMM was buying back stocks all of last year and the price was just going sideways even after beating the street. Fundamentals were great but big money did not like RIMM anymore.

simple, they lost major market share due to an outdated OS.

the big problem they are now experiencing is all those loyal to RIM who plan to buy another RIM product are waiting for the new qnx operating system (the OS found in the playbook), and thus sales will stay very low until this product, which is continually being delayed, is released.

heard Jim Basille is an ass lol

Fuck it.I just traded my iPhone 4 for a bbm. So much easier to get chicks to give u thier bbm #. rim for the win!
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Steve Jobs is a dick according to that chart. lol

I feel like they had a "buisness as usual" mentality and never really made a huge serious risk in trying to capture the casual user. I mean come-on, look at the first storm for god sakes. It almost felt like they just sat on their laurels while they held on to the buisness market thinking nothing can approach them in this segment.

Now look, they are losing money and market share from the likes of apple and android.

Nokia has more money than RIM and it's starting to fail as well

in the end, how can anyone compete against Google and Apple

It's too late now, Android updates it's OS way too quickly, with too many phones to choose from, and too large a following. They gotta stick with their business niche and strengthen that

Time to short their stocks.

couple main reasons from the consumer end.

qnx took too long to get here (still isnt here).
their flagship Bold, has been unchanged since 2009 (9700, 9780) and the 9900 which should have been out in 2010, was announced in may 2011, and wont be out until september 2011. a year or more behind when it should have been out to compete


they have 7 new phones on the way which should have been out a year ago.

when the 9900 launches, and then qnx launches, RIM will at least be caught up and not 2 years behind and RIM will rebound. they certainly wont take over, but they will stop sinking so poorly.

There's also the simple reason that Blackberry's hold was on businesses. Companies aren't going to give an entry level position a phone and a phone plan, it goes to the old guys.

Old people don't see well. Many of them are tech illiterate. They like big screens cause they get big text. Introduce apple to the mix, it's simple and pretty much idiot proof and somewhat of a status symbol. Even if you ignore android, it's pretty obvious that many of the execs will try to talk their IT departments into allowing their iphones onto the company plans. This trickles down and pretty soon, Blackberry doesn't have that strangle hold anymore.

At least that's what I've seen in the Engineering Consulting sector.

i think they should've developed their corp market. let apple/android have the consumer market.
better apps / phones / services for corp = charge higher premium.

Yeah, except when RIM finally goes bust.. you won't have a BBM network anymore!... lol.

Jokes on you.

My dad said at ICBC, a lot of people are moving to Iphones since ICBC allowed them onto the secured network.

I'll bet my money on Nokia that they have a better chance of rebounding back than Blackberry.

blackberry has to basically create an entirely new OS to be competitive in the new market.

i think they might just better sell pins and offer BBM to other OS

RIM could make money selling BBM in the app stores.

kinda missed the big $ boat on that one since the stock has already plummeted.

It came down to this question back in 2007: How seriously do you take the iPhone?

The first challenge is: do you believe the threat? The tech industry is made up of primarily old school geeks. A lot of them had the same mentality the Apple haters have:
- expensive POS
- no features
- fragile
- who can type on that?
- that's not innovation, anyone can do touch screen / been done before
- it's all marketing (they're good a fooling ppl)
So some bet one way (MS, RIM, Nokia) and lost. They didn't believe the market would change the way it did so quickly.


Now, once you realize you're kind of wrong, the second challenge is: Are you capable of doing what Apple is doing? Asking old school companies to all of a sudden stop engineering with numbers and start designing for feel is NOT easy. Symbian 3 AND XpressMusic AND Windows on a touchscreen (WTF?) = missing the point entirely. I want to put RIM here as well, but I've never used their phones, only the playbook (SAS knows what they're doing). Unfortunately, hacking on top of their existing platforms won't work.. they'll have to build a brand new one, which is no trivial task - a few years of work. And that's where we are today. By next year, these guys should be back with something competitive but 4 yrs behind the big 2.

Still looks like a good short doesn't it?