RIM announces Q4 revenues miss, top executives leaving company - Page 3

People died on that ship. Your reference is not really funny.

Titanic sank due to inane ship design (bad steel rivets, watertight walls not watertight...).
Lusitania sank due to being a weapon transport with guns, shot at by a submarine.

I don't think both situations are comparable.

Hence, which is your point: Apple has torpedoed RIM, or RIM was so badly managed that Apple's i(Ceberg/Phone) sank it?

Buying one of their products would be like giving a RIM job without wiping first.

It's sad when a company starts going downhill. When you're on to a good thing sometimes it's tempting to try and preserve that. But preservation is the opposite of innovation, and you need to keep innovation, even to the extend of obsoleting your best product, or the competition will.

So if people have died during an event that event can't ever be referenced in any way? Where is the logic in that?

That's right, only fanboys buy Apple products.

So you reasoning is that the lowering of the price from $600 to $400 to $200 had no barring on the customers choice to buy the phone. That the iPhone proving itself to be the best smartphone on the market, and to gain 3G and an App Store in its second generation had no barring on its sales. That only the switch from profit sharing to a subsidy which benefitted the carriers yet it was AT&T that wanted to keep and Apple get rid of it is the reason why the iPhone sold well to carriers. Perfectly reasonable, perfectly sane comment¡

That's precisely my reasoning. The price cut and the subsidies are the reason why Apple managed to sell iphones.

1) That isn't what you said. You said it was because the carriers are Apple's customers, not the consumers buying the devices AND that it was because of the move from profit sharing to a subsidy with no mention of the drop in price.

Here's another way to look at that. A) If carriers are buying the phones buy consumers aren't then the carriers have phones they can't move. Conclusion: Regardless of how many units a carrier buys it's about sell-through. B) If there was a way to keep profit-sharing but lower the price to $200 do you think they would have sold less because the term profit-sharing was still applied? Conclusion: Nope, customers only care about the value/cost.

2) You''re still ignoring that Apple sold more phones because of increased recognition, and added HW, SW and features. If you think their increase in sales was only because of an internal carrier-to-vendor shift from profit sharing to subsidy then why has the iPhone continued to growth it's sales year after year when there no additional subsiding? Conclusion: Your assessment is illogical.

I don't like all the gloating that goes on here about other companies problems so I agree with you. Ive never used a Blackberry because I can't use those tiny little keypads, but I have friends who still wouldn't use anything else so they must have something about them.

We've seen this so many times over the years, a company with a dominate market position becomes complacent and stops innovating and then bam they get nailed when something truly original like the iPhone comes along and changes everything. I'm surprised nobody has come along and acquired RIM given how low the share price is, if only for their technology and patents.

The only way I could see either Apple or Google being interested in what RIM has to offer is if either of the companies was serious about targeting business users. In both cases I think it's safe to say that it's something they're not interested in. Both did add support for Exchange ActiveSync at various levels, but not much beyond that. Consider that (with the exception of Motorola) Google doesn't make hardware and that Apple no longer sells a dedicated server product (Mac Pro is too big, Mini isn't big enough). As you said, the software isn't worth much so that's not really all that valuable at this point either.

Thats not called survival. That is called a slow death. There is no way they can grow off that. They will probably follow in IBMs footprints (or at least try). They will sell the phone trademarks and designs to a chinese company that can work with lower margins (maybe even Lenovo) and sell patents to Apple or Google. Then they will need to figure out where they can quickly carve a niche with QNX.

Next up may be Nokia. They seem to be following the same path as RIM. They just are not quite as far along yet. Give them a couple more years, although they at least have one technology (that they are not using) that could mean something. They were originally making QT their mobile platform. There might be some room in the cross platform mobile space (or tablet or desktop space) for them, but they would need completely different management and would need to move to more of a consulting role like IBM.

Well, not really. We don't know at what volume (or at what price) Asus needs to sell its device in order to at least break even, if not make a profit. We also don't know what level of R&D dollars or marketing went into the device. Same for RIM and the Playbook. I personally don't know at what volume (or at what price) RIM needs to sell the Playbook in order to break even or make a profit. The last figures that I recall, related to the Playbook, were from late in 2011, when RIM took a $485 million inventory write down on unsold Playbooks. RIM apparently ordered production of roughly 2.65 million Playbooks. And what have they shipped (not sold) so far? Something like 1 million to date?

I've seen estimates of roughly $300 per unit for the average Playbook's BOM. So the estimate of unshipped units times the estimated BOM seems to make mathematical sense... about a $500 million hole. And at the, now heavily discounted, prices (which is apparently below the BOM), they lose money on each sale. But better something than nothing, I suppose.

Although I refused a Blackberry when they were all the rage about 6 years ago, while working for a previous employer (I didn't feel the need to be part of the Crackberry Cult), I do find recent events to be rather sad. More and better competition is better for the consumer. It's also better (IMO) for the players, as it FORCES them to work hard and keep their eyes on the ball. But at this point, it certainly appears as if RIM is just another dying tech company that got lazy.

I don't see them turning this sinking ship around... does anyone else?

The statute of limitations on tragicomedy is ten years, or 3652 days, which ever comes first. Sorry, but those are the rules. I'm still waiting for the OK to mention Steve Irwin.

They are all inter-related --- without Apple acknowledging that their original business model was flawed, Apple could even get to sell iphones beyond the original 4 carriers (in US, UK, Germany and France).

And that was after Apple had to drop the price by $200.


Well, the second and third place is the Kindle Fire and the Playbook --- both are selling at a loss. Then you have Lenovo accusing Samsung inflating their numbers --- that Samsung only sold 20000 Galaxy Tab. Then you have Asus having to report in a lawsuit that they ship only 80000 Transformer Prime.

Just looking at the whole industry --- RIM isn't doing that bad.

What I'm saying is, just looking at the (raw) sales figures doesn't indicate how well or badly RIM is doing. I'm not trying to pile on the company as it continues to slip. I'm just stating how it's doing, in regard to year over year sales, revenues and share price. Amazon is willing to sell the Kindle on very thin margins, or a loss, because the company has the luxury of a content base... which RIM does not.

At the end of the day, when you've obligated yourself to producing 2.65 million units of a product, and a year later you've only shipped (not actually sold) less than half of that number, you're doing pretty badly.

I don't follow RIM or the Playbook that closely. But I'd be very surprised if there was any further development of this particular product. As I said, I think that's a shame, as competition tends to improve the breed. Course, at some point, Darwin will step in and drop the hammer too.