RIM death watch

[IHateMyJob2004]

Bought a few in the money call options today. Intent is to dump them on a run up

 

[IceBergSLiM]

Blackberry is competing in the mainstream market against ZTE, Huawei, and other high-volume low-margin juggernauts, neither of which have to bear the expense of maintaining an entire OS. Apple completely owns the high-end market. Microsoft is desperately trying to penetrate any market that they can, and has a gazillion dollars to throw at their efforts.

Blackberry doesn't have the broad selection of Android, the brand recognition of iPhone, or the deep pockets of MS. I have no idea why you think that Blackberry will be suddenly be successful in India, when they are foundering everywhere else.

most people using an iphone and android today have at one point owned a blackberry and probably would consider it again all things being equal. It wasn't long ago that BB was the phone to have. The brand recognition in the mobile space is very high. Higher than MS I would guess.

 

[dmcowen674]

Stock's down 10%-ish today. I'm down like $200 by now. Thank goodness I only put $1k in.

With Nortel gone is BB (formerly RIMM) Canada's largest Company?

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Reading some comments about the Z10 by people in the UK.\

ya, I'm not worried at all. Pretty much makes specialized apps for web pages a thing of the past. The web browser is that good.

The whole hub and flow interface is so much better than reading about can justify. It has to be experienced to realize how bad iOS and Android are. People need to stop bad mouthing it and experience it.

 

[Bateluer]

Update the thread title from 'RIM' to 'Blackberry'.

Wonder who will snap up the leftovers? Microsoft? I imagine that Apple or Google attempting to buy the entire company would attract too much regulator attention. Perhaps if the company was auctioned off in pieces?

 

[PimpJuice]

Blackberry is competing in the mainstream market against ZTE, Huawei, and other high-volume low-margin juggernauts, neither of which have to bear the expense of maintaining an entire OS. Apple completely owns the high-end market. Microsoft is desperately trying to penetrate any market that they can, and has a gazillion dollars to throw at their efforts.

Blackberry doesn't have the broad selection of Android, the brand recognition of iPhone, or the deep pockets of MS. I have no idea why you think that Blackberry will be suddenly be successful in India, when they are foundering everywhere else.

This

 

[Imp]

Got a notice on my trading account that the new symbol for Blackberry is BB__ -- I forget. I copied the message, but then copied something else.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Imp,

It's changing to BBRY on Monday.

All,
Initial sales data from the U.K., where the Z10 went on sale yesterday, are encouraging:

Our initial checks indicate that sales in the UK are off to a strong start. Some stores had lineups out front with widespread sell outs of the White Z10 and limited stock of the Black Z10 […] We believe Carphone Warehouse is seeing widespread sell-outs while O2, Vodafone, Orange and EE are seeing robust demand. We estimate sell-in to be at least several hundred thousand units. To put that in perspective, the iPhone had first weekend sales of 5M+ in the U.S. The U.S. is five times larger so continued strong sales could bode very well for Blackberry […] Also, our checks indicate that pre-orders in the UAE and Canada have had a solid start. While this is not the crux of our call, these initial data points could provide some relief as many thought that the Z10 was DOA.

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtrader...ds-the-table-on-software-prospects-z10-sales/

And yes, sell-in is what the stores buy. Not what they sell. But the same paragraph says that stores are selling out.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

From the sounds of things, it sounds like BB10s in Canada are going to be wiped out by pre-orders. No pre-order and you're screwed. Some pretty damned impressive demand. Guessing 100,000+ phones but probably more in a country of 35 million. If they sell 350,000, that is 1% of the population in the first few days.

I anticipate that Canada will have 200,000 or so phones on launch day.

UPDATE: Some carriers now taking new pre-orders but saying that you'll be waiting till atleast the 14th of February.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Wow, what a horrendous super bowl advertisement.

 

[yllus]

That was a $3.8 million dollar commercial? This pretty much seals everyone's suspicion that RIM has absolutely no idea how to spend money wisely anymore.

 

[lothar]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UPbhzmIq9uU
What BlackBerry 10 CAN'T Do? They spent $3.8 million on this crap?

 

[Tequila]

I dunno. It wasn't bad. It wasn't great but wasn't bad.

 

[KentState]

I was going to say the same thing about the commercial. At first I thought it was a Windows 8 phone advert until the very end.

 

[klinc]

Seriously who buys a phone that takes 10 minute to power on?

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

That was a $3.8 million dollar commercial? This pretty much seals everyone's suspicion that RIM has absolutely no idea how to spend money wisely anymore.

I wouldn't go that far. Thorsten has done alot with RIMM in terms of turning a bloated internal system into a very lean one.

Commercials are a crap shoot. They work or they don't. This one was horrible (in my opinion). Not as bad as that homo-erotic soft porn Calvin Klein put out though. IU think it was Calvin Klein anyway.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Seriously who buys a phone that takes 10 minute to power on?

The Dev Alpha took 40 seconds. I think final hardware is the same. Not as bad as my Droid 3 that takes 2+ minutes.

 

[yllus]

I wouldn't go that far. Thorsten has done alot with RIMM in terms of turning a bloated internal system into a very lean one.

Commercials are a crap shoot. They work or they don't. This one was horrible (in my opinion). Not as bad as that homo-erotic soft porn Calvin Klein put out though. IU think it was Calvin Klein anyway.

I actually think the new phones are pretty decent, as is the OS (as launch partners we've had one of each in the office for a few weeks for testing). I've also written apps for the platform - so I feel confident in saying that the technology is quite sound.

Their marketing efforts are horrendous. Up and down, every single thing they do in the marketing realm in North America has been awful for years. And if their share of the NA market is what keeps them alive or kills them, they are already dead.

This is the best recent era BlackBerry commercial I've seen. Yeah, it's about a minute-thirty too long, but pared down a little it could have really changed some minds up here. It's unbelievable that they go with gimmicks instead.

 

[silverpig]

Seriously who buys a phone that takes 10 minute to power on?

Do you reboot your phone every hour?

 

[silverpig]

I actually think the new phones are pretty decent, as is the OS (as launch partners we've had one of each in the office for a few weeks for testing). I've also written apps for the platform - so I feel confident in saying that the technology is quite sound.

Their marketing efforts are horrendous. Up and down, every single thing they do in the marketing realm in North America has been awful for years. And if their share of the NA market is what keeps them alive or kills them, they are already dead.

This is the best recent era BlackBerry commercial I've seen. Yeah, it's about a minute-thirty too long, but pared down a little it could have really changed some minds up here. It's unbelievable that they go with gimmicks instead.

They got an external ad agency to do the ad.

 

[Imp]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UPbhzmIq9uU
What BlackBerry 10 CAN'T Do? They spent $3.8 million on this crap?

So... what the hell CAN the phone do? At least rip Apple off and show its functions off.

 

[Ichinisan]

They got an external ad agency to do the ad.

The external ad agency would have pitched several ideas. This is the one Blackberry chose to go with.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

They got an external ad agency to do the ad.

Can't follwo the link now, but I think it was a company that has a long history with Blackberry. They did it for fun without RIMs approval. It is baially a freely produced video and it is pretty cool.

Ichinisan is right though. I think the overall idea was sound. Jsut poor execution. It hsould have shown the phone dfoing things it can't. Not having the person do things he can't really do.

Have the phone double as a fire extinguisher to put out a car far. Have it transform into a ladder to get a cat out of a tree. Etc. Then the focus is on the phone. The problem is that the commercial did not make it the focus. It made the guy too much of a focus.

 

[Red Storm]

most people using an iphone and android today have at one point owned a blackberry and probably would consider it again all things being equal. It wasn't long ago that BB was the phone to have. The brand recognition in the mobile space is very high. Higher than MS I would guess.

I don't think most people had a BB. Android and iOS gained their users from the rapidly exploding smartphone market.

Over time people become more and more entrenched in their OS of choice, making them less likely to switch.

In my opinion BB has a negative brand recognition to the general smart phone public.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

I don't think most people had a BB. Android and iOS gained their users from the rapidly exploding smartphone market.

Over time people become more and more entrenched in their OS of choice, making them less likely to switch.

In my opinion BB has a negative brand recognition to the general smart phone public.

I'll agree that this is the gerneal sentiment in the USA only.