RIM is in the shitter

Written by

The on-going competitive environment is impacting our business in the form of lower volumes and highly competitive pricing dynamics in the marketplace, and we expect our Q1 results to reflect this, and likely result in an operating loss for the quarter. We are continuing to be aggressive as we compete for our customers’ business – both enterprise and consumer – around the world, and our teams are working hard to provide cost-competitive, feature-rich solutions to our global customer base.

Translation: We’re fucked.



  • http://papermail.me/ Jacob Penderworth

    It looks like they’ve finally reached rock bottom while other corporations are nearing their summit.

  • Steven Fisher

    That’s a much more honest statement that means exactly the same thing as their second sentence.

    The first sentence is translated “Oh man, we got fucked last quarter.”

  • http://twitter.com/jvargas92 Jeff V

    Or, it can be read as “We missed the boat on a new OS, then we told people we had one coming up soon to get them off our back. We launched a half-baked tablet featuring it, but it was incomplete and instead of spending resources to shore it up, we spent boatloads of cash advertising it and mocking the iPad, but not on enabling basic PIM functionality on the device itself. Then we told people our new Blackberry devices would be out in 2012, then pushed that back to late 2012 and told users that old devices would not be compatible with the new OS, forcing users to either hold off on a new Blackberry purchase or to look towards competitors with viable products already out that meet their needs. But we’ll totally get them back with our new OS and improved BBM client. If we make it that long…”

  • http://www.kevwil.me/ Kevin Williams

    I thought RIM no longer focused on consumer products? Why are they continuining to be aggressive in markets they don’t care about anymore? http://www.asymco.com/2012/03/30/rim-to-give-up/

  • http://financial-alchemist.blogspot.com Turley Muller

    A loss? Basically only way RIMM could report a loss is if it writes down value of its inventory. Margins on BB service is sky high, and margins on handsets are decent. Margins on Playbooks are negative (but already wrote them off). Thus, RIMM is likely to take an inventory charge which would imply sell-through has declined significantly halting sales to the channel.   

  • lucascott

    Seems to me that the big issue for RIM was that they were trying to compete with the outside instead of looking at their customers and those needs. Asking why someone might get say an iPhone or an iPad and trying to solve those needs. 

    Making a 7-8 inch tablet and loading the same software as the Blackberry with some kind of cloud or ad hoc network ‘air drop’ syncing between that and a users phone might have been all that they needed to do if the issue was “i can’t really read documents on my Blackberry that well”. And so on

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Danny-Mendez/504624408 Danny Mendez

      Yes.

  • http://twitter.com/Brad_Strickland Brad_Strickland

    Sounds like they’re at a complete loss as to what to do. While their competitors march on.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Danny-Mendez/504624408 Danny Mendez

    RIM is a hardware company built by hardware engineers first and foremost, and this has become incredibly obvious since the company can’t keep up with software companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft. As a result, RIM would be wise to make incredibly sexy, beautiful, useful, hiqh-quality hardware with the option of a Google or Microsoft OS. Problem solved. RIM continues making great hardware. Google and Microsoft continue making (arguably) great software. Everyone survives. Nokia figured this out quick. 

    • http://www.facebook.com/min.zhu.90475 Min Zhu

      RIM is software company, live on software, if RIM live on hardware, it had been died hundred time. that is why software compant may choose Nokia/Moto, and never choose RIM