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RIM death watch

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RIM went from $40 to almost $70 on Playbook hype... I love that it went up almost 30% over the last month, but no thank you.
 

Pretty much what I expected to read. People that complain are never the ones holding BB 7 phones:

Eric Weiss, a spokesman for the transportation board, declined to elaborate on the problems the agency has had with BlackBerry devices. He didn’t say what generation of BlackBerrys the agency is using.

Heins said in the interview last week that many government customers are using older versions of the BlackBerry operating system.

“Many of these devices sit on BlackBerry 5 or BlackBerry 6, not even on BlackBerry 7, so the experience is not what I know and what other BlackBerry users know in the consumer domain,” he said. “It is a three-, four-year-old experience.”
 
They've sold more handsets this year than ever before.. sales are constantly increasing worldwide and they still have a large portion of the market sale.
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Uh oh, not confirming the bias of others here. Duck and cover!
 
You mean up 11% today.

Perhaps a short squeeze is in effect?

Your US markets closed today and yesterday early at 1pm. RIM trades on TSX and kept trading up 18% on Thursday. As of 1pm-ish, it's down 4-5% on the TSX and started down a few percent. It's still trading now.
 
So is the business prediction that RIM will hold onto 3rd place against Microsoft? Is that the reason for the recent increase?

Read something about expectations for BB10 having improved. Something like a 20% increase in predicted sales of BB10 devices. I have no idea what the source of the info was or over what time period those sales are expected.

I think it doesn't matter really. RIMM has a hell of a device on their hands. It's an issue of marketing and consumer acceptance in the US. Emerging markets should embrace it though, since there is no real loyalty to anything yet.
 
I HATED my phone because of its speed, but when I read articles like that it reminds me of some of the documentation I saw at my company supporting a move to the iPhone. It basically reads like this:

We really want an iPhone so that we can download apps and stuff.

I don't miss my BB AT ALL. I love life a million times more now that it's not part of it, but I won't pretend it hurt my productivity. It emailed well (actually better than the iPhone's mail interface) and it worked for phone calls. The rest is just personal time wasting rubbish 🙂
 
I HATED my phone because of its speed, but when I read articles like that it reminds me of some of the documentation I saw at my company supporting a move to the iPhone. It basically reads like this:

We really want an iPhone so that we can download apps and stuff.

I don't miss my BB AT ALL. I love life a million times more now that it's not part of it, but I won't pretend it hurt my productivity. It emailed well (actually better than the iPhone's mail interface) and it worked for phone calls. The rest is just personal time wasting rubbish 🙂

That's funny. Pretty much what I think of my Android. I downloaded tons of games when I first got it. now that I've had it a year, the only game I play is Angry Birds on occasion. Other than that, I use it for the internet, e-mail, a phone, mp3 player, Pandora and a running app. If BB10 has something interesting and gives me all this stuff (Angry Birds will be there), and the reviews are good, I will be getting a BB10. The only thing I am unsure about is whether or not a good running app will be there. The app I use now will not be going to BB10. It's stupid really since it could be ported in 10 minutes. But I spoke with the people that created it and they have no intent on supporting anything other than Android and iOS. Should be a good running app out there though since people at Crackberry said there is a good app for BB7 already.
 
So not only is RIM losing subscribers in developed markets (no surprise there), they're also losing subscribers overall. On a more positive note, RIM's restructuring looks like it's working; the company is losing a lot less than previous quarters. If RIM can hold on long enough to restructure in RIM may still survive as a going concern.

Too bad about their stock price today, though. Ouch.
 
That's funny. Pretty much what I think of my Android. I downloaded tons of games when I first got it. now that I've had it a year, the only game I play is Angry Birds on occasion. Other than that, I use it for the internet, e-mail, a phone, mp3 player, Pandora and a running app. If BB10 has something interesting and gives me all this stuff (Angry Birds will be there), and the reviews are good, I will be getting a BB10. The only thing I am unsure about is whether or not a good running app will be there. The app I use now will not be going to BB10. It's stupid really since it could be ported in 10 minutes. But I spoke with the people that created it and they have no intent on supporting anything other than Android and iOS. Should be a good running app out there though since people at Crackberry said there is a good app for BB7 already.

i won't be moving to BB even if it's as good as android. why would i move for no benefit? for it to really take off it needs to be markedly better than android or ios and i don't see that happening.
 
i won't be moving to BB even if it's as good as android. why would i move for no benefit? for it to really take off it needs to be markedly better than android or ios and i don't see that happening.

Some people have no loyalty to OS or Android. And if it is good, some people will try it.

Even if that takes RIMM to 10% market share in the US, that isn't that bad since it means 30 million sales in the US.

The real benefit is to anyone that uses their smartphone for business. It is designed around it granted they are trying to make it more mainstream at the same time.

People that speak multiple languages will like it since it's autocomplete functionality for typing can use 3 dictionaries at once while being grammatically predictive. In many countries, that is a big deal.

FWIW: I will never consider iOS. I have a Droid 3 and I hate the thing. 8 months old and hte headphone jack is shot. I don't know if it is the lockups (requiring battery pulls about every 2 months), confusion with thinking I am still connected to my trucks bluetooth (requires shutdown of phone to fix) when I am not in my truck or way in which Android navigates through the OS that bothers me most. I can't wait to see what to see what BB10 brings. Android is over-rated crap. And I don't care what the latest OS from Android brings. I am pissed off at what i got with my phone. PERIOD. That bluetooth thing sucks most because I get incoming phone calls and can't take them. I have to reboot my phone then call back whomever it was on the other end 5 minutes after they called me.

A few features that provide reasons to move to BB10:
1) 0.5 seconds and you are looking at your e-mail inbox.
2) 0.5 seconds to go back to any of the last 8 apps that you loaded.
3) touchscreen keyboard that is reportedly the best one people have ever used.
4) Native Android apps can be ported to BB10 in about 10 minutes by developers in most cases.
5) Native iOS apps can be ported to BB10 with some work. But developers say that RIMM has created the best porting tool they have ever used.
6) 4+5 => you can potentially get the all the apps unique to iOS or Android and run them in BB10
7) Timeshift camera (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oGguMxE3DVI). Doesn't seem like much. Well, take a picture of 10 people and 3 are blinking. You can use timeshift to fix the picture of those 3 people to moments just before or after the photo was taken to make everyone open eyed. Then post to facebook. Android and iOS do not do this.
8) If you actually use your phone for work and travel alot, you can sqap out a fully charged battery. iPhone does not.

BB10 is about getting work done. On top of that, it is all about making social networking (e-mail, phone, test, facebook, etc) work together fluidly in one area of the phone (part of point 1 above). It is secondarily a toy.
 
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So not only is RIM losing subscribers in developed markets (no surprise there), they're also losing subscribers overall. On a more positive note, RIM's restructuring looks like it's working; the company is losing a lot less than previous quarters. If RIM can hold on long enough to restructure in RIM may still survive as a going concern.

Too bad about their stock price today, though. Ouch.

You think the stock price is bad, you should have watched the after hours roller coaster last night after earnings.

Subscribers are down 1 million. Well, I guess one bad quarter in that metric had to happen eventually.

Restructuring is working well.

I am curious about the financials. I want to see what happened with FCF and the cash/equivalents. Someone said it went from $2.2B to $2.9B this quareter but I havn't bothered to research that.
 
Wow - dev alpha videos of the BB10 make it look pretty damn awesome. If the above features are part of the BB10 release next year, I think that might help them survive.

After switching from BB9000 to iphone 5 [work provided phones] - I do miss certain features of the Blackberry... but so far, I'm enjoying the apps to keep me entertained.
 
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