Who's paying for the RIM smear stories?

[DivideBYZero]

After the recent rash of "death and doom " stories about RIM, especially at BGR, it's interesting that someones agency is pitching this type of story at... Crackberry.

http://crackberry.com/haters-wanna-hate-seriously-paid-smear-campaigns-are-not-cool

MS, Google? Other? Who has the most to gain?

 

[Mopetar]

Who has the most to gain?

Tech site journalists looking for sensationalist headlines to drive page views. Hell, there're still people writing the occasional 'eminent financial demise of Apple' article after all these years, so it shouldn't come as much surprise for them to pounce on RIM now that there's blood in the water.

That said, who's so blatantly stupid to try and start a smear campaign like that? Is Robert Chilver some glue sniffing intern with a big mouth and serious lack of discretion? People nowadays.

 

[sandorski]

Outside of North America RIM is still doing really well. Especially in Emerging Markets.

 

[Oyeve]

The consumer are paying for it,or will be

 

[gsaldivar]

There are spin-doctors in every camp. It's not beneath any of the carriers or manufacturers to hire a PR firm to do some dirty work for them. Certainly, RIM shouldn't be any stranger to these techniques. The only difference now, is that the dogs are paid to go after RIM instead of their competition...

Here is a recent one about the "decline" of Android:

"Android lost market share in the U.S. last month, according to Nielsen's smartphone survey"

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Andr...cording-to-Nielsens-smartphone-survey_id19193

But if you look closer...

"report of Nielsen results which claimed that Android dropped a point of share, to 36%, in April ... Now come the Nielsen numbers for May. Nielsen says Android share went from 36% to 38%. That’s consistent with the earlier Nielsen report ... one-month bobble in the near past that may be just an artifact.

"But the May Nielsen report said ... that Android’s share of recent smartphone acquirers had been flat for three months – and when I read that I realized what Charlie Wolf must have done.

"That 50% to 49% drop wasn’t “share”, it was some measure of share among recent purchasers. Wolf threw those figures on the table, muddying the distinction, thinking he could con a bunch of business reporters into thinking Android’s share growth had gone into reverse...

"The effect was certainly deceptive. Wolf exploited the fact that reporters are in general (a) lazy, and (b) under constant deadline pressure, and thus (c) tend not to question stories that are “too good to check”..."

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3373

 

[Pliablemoose]

It's a conspiracy, DBZ...

Seriously, hedge fund managers do this stuff all day long.

 

[corkyg]

Just call up the stock symbol at any investment site and study the fundamentals and analyst reports. Example:

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ARIMM

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

Why are app developers and people moving to other platforms? Becaue they are lazy. Blackberry is a pain to write apps for because it is designed as a business device 1st and has a much better security system than iOS Android or WP.
Let's not forget BES. Mobile devices are a good way for company info to get out due to lost or stolen phones. With a BES you simply turn the phone off or wipe it remotely. Can't do that from a central location that manages hundreds to thousands of devices for Android, iOS or WP7.
Though I think when the new BES software comes out, BB stock is going to go up again as it will have support for iOS, Android and WP7 devices.

 

[MrX8503]

Why are app developers and people moving to other platforms? Becaue they are lazy. Blackberry is a pain to write apps for because it is designed as a business device 1st and has a much better security system than iOS Android or WP.

If you were a developer and you made more money on iOS/Android while being easier to program for, you would ditch BBOS too.

BBOS is hard to develop for because of its numerous navigation inputs and various phone models.

 

[foghorn67]

From a world where major news papers tamper with a dead person's phone, I am not surprised the least bit.

 

[mammador]

IMO, these stories were fabricated. A "RIM employee", unless s/he were a friend or relative of the two CEOs, would most likely get fired for writing those letters.

 

[gsaldivar]

IMO, these stories were fabricated. A "RIM employee", unless s/he were a friend or relative of the two CEOs, would most likely get fired for writing those letters.

At least in the case of the RIM employee who was interviewed by Business Insight, they said up front that they were indeed able to confirm his employment at RIM.

 

[Pliablemoose]

LOL, there's a long river in the Middle East, I hear it's called de nial....

RIM is jacked up, claiming there's a conspiracy doesn't add email to the Playbook or the fact that it's phones are a couple years behind the industry

Do you all think RIMs market share will go up next quarter? LOL

 

[the DRIZZLE]

It's a conspiracy, DBZ...

Seriously, hedge fund managers do this stuff all day long.

Yup if there's a conspiracy it's by people who are short the stock, not competitors.

 

[Pliablemoose]

Yup if there's a conspiracy it's by people who are short the stock, not competitors.

Yeah, they're real sharks, it's crazy... There are people who get paid to troll investment forums, or just brokers trying to get a stock to move. The damn forums are nearly useless because of it.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

Yeah, they're real sharks, it's crazy... There are people who get paid to troll investment forums, or just brokers trying to get a stock to move. The damn forums are nearly useless because of it.

Working at hedge fund is the greatest job in the world. You get to play with other people's money and keep 20% of the upside.

 

[DivideBYZero]

If you were a developer and you made more money on iOS/Android while being easier to program for, you would ditch BBOS too.

BBOS is hard to develop for because of its numerous navigation inputs and various phone models.

OK, here is the reality:

iOS devs: Some make great money, many make none
Android devs: Almost no money, rampant piracy, rouge apps
BB Devs: Highest $/sale of any app store

That will probably upset iPhone and Android proponents, but it's the reality.

As for difficult to develop for, I'm pretty sure most here are not app developers full time. I know we have a few part timers, but lets take an honest appraisal from a real developer who explains why he still writes for BBOS:

http://ekkescorner.wordpress.com/20...ter-space-why-developing-apps-for-blackberry/

Note it's not all flowers and rainbows, but great applications are possible just as easily on BlackBerry devices, if not more so in some cases, than any other platform. Parroting journalists who haven't cut a line of code in their lives isn't credible. Most bashers suggest the black text on white apps of the past. This is the case if the Dev chooses to support OS4. If you do that today you limit your market to 32% of BB owners, as 68% of BBs are running OS5+, which has a far greater set of apis for ui.

 

[corkyg]

OK, here is the reality: iOS devs: Some make great money, many make none
Android devs: Almost no money, rampant piracy, rogue apps
BB Devs: Highest $/sale of any app store ...

That is reality. In the end, it is all about making money. When market share drops, sales drop. When sales drop, profit drops, and folks start getting pink slips. Then along comes a bigger fish and buys the cripple at a bargain price. Sometimes that can save a company, but often it leads to technology cannibalization and elimination of competition.

 

[Deeko]

As for difficult to develop for, I'm pretty sure most here are not app developers full time. I know we have a few part timers, but lets take an honest appraisal from a real developer who explains why he still writes for BBOS:

http://ekkescorner.wordpress.com/20...ter-space-why-developing-apps-for-blackberry/

Note it's not all flowers and rainbows, but great applications are possible just as easily on BlackBerry devices, if not more so in some cases, than any other platform. Parroting journalists who haven't cut a line of code in their lives isn't credible. Most bashers suggest the black text on white apps of the past. This is the case if the Dev chooses to support OS4. If you do that today you limit your market to 32% of BB owners, as 68% of BBs are running OS5+, which has a far greater set of apis for ui.

To be fair, I didn't particularly enjoy developing for the PlayBook - but it had nothing to do with the PlayBook itself, it was the fact that I'm a down-and-dirty low level programmer at heart, and I was writing an Air app in Actionscript. I imagine the hordes of Flash developers out there would be right at home on the platform. And for the record, I don't really like developing for Android, either, and that is completely the fault of the SDK/platform, not Java or Eclipse.

 

[Tom]

"lets take an honest appraisal from a real developer.. "

yes, RIM sure is the bullet train of portable device OS and apps..

 

[Pliablemoose]

http://allthingsd.com/20110708/smartphone_job_market/

 

[yllus]

A lot of it us because the company is Canadian - Canadians love to drag down their own. We're not very good at self-promotion or unity.

 

[MrX8503]

OK, here is the reality:

iOS devs: Some make great money, many make none
Android devs: Almost no money, rampant piracy, rouge apps
BB Devs: Highest $/sale of any app store

That will probably upset iPhone and Android proponents, but it's the reality.

As for difficult to develop for, I'm pretty sure most here are not app developers full time. I know we have a few part timers, but lets take an honest appraisal from a real developer who explains why he still writes for BBOS:

http://ekkescorner.wordpress.com/20...ter-space-why-developing-apps-for-blackberry/

Note it's not all flowers and rainbows, but great applications are possible just as easily on BlackBerry devices, if not more so in some cases, than any other platform. Parroting journalists who haven't cut a line of code in their lives isn't credible. Most bashers suggest the black text on white apps of the past. This is the case if the Dev chooses to support OS4. If you do that today you limit your market to 32% of BB owners, as 68% of BBs are running OS5+, which has a far greater set of apis for ui.

Not sure where you got the idea that being a BB developer has the greatest return. The reality is that most mobile developers develop for iOS. They even put up with Steve Job's draconian policies. You have to ask yourself why these developers put up with it if the reason wasn't money.

As for which platform is easier to developer for, I would say the advantage the iPhone has is that its SDK is unrivaled. Its documentation and support is miles ahead of the competition. Great applications are possible on BB or even Android, but the truth is that iOS churns out a greater volume of apps that look better and has more functions to boot.

 

[Deeko]

Not sure where you got the idea that being a BB developer has the greatest return. The reality is that most mobile developers develop for iOS. They even put up with Steve Job's draconian policies. You have to ask yourself why these developers put up with it if the reason wasn't money.

If you look at the payout rates, the *average* app for Blackberry makes more than the average app for iOS. However, due to sheer scale, iOS devs make more as a whole, and the upper limit is much higher on iOS, which attracts devs to the platform.

As for which platform is easier to developer for, I would say the advantage the iPhone has is that its SDK is unrivaled. Its documentation and support is miles ahead of the competition. Great applications are possible on BB or even Android, but the truth is that iOS churns out a greater volume of apps that look better and has more functions to boot.

This is a reason why WP7 has seen such a strong developer interest so far too. The SDK is fantastic, the developer tools are very good, and the documentation/community is deep.

 

[DivideBYZero]

Not sure where you got the idea that being a BB developer has the greatest return. The reality is that most mobile developers develop for iOS. They even put up with Steve Job's draconian policies. You have to ask yourself why these developers put up with it if the reason wasn't money.

As for which platform is easier to developer for, I would say the advantage the iPhone has is that its SDK is unrivaled. Its documentation and support is miles ahead of the competition. Great applications are possible on BB or even Android, but the truth is that iOS churns out a greater volume of apps that look better and has more functions to boot.

BlackBerry users are willing to pay the biggest premium for apps, with a median price point of $5.99, compared to $2.72 on Android and $1.99 on iPhone.*

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-rele...le-apps-than-previously-thought-89589062.html