RIM called a 'one-trick pony,' company's 'nightmare' seen as benefit to Apple

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  • Reply 101 of 118
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    RIM is clearly f***ed. There's no other way to put it. Last year when Steve Jobs chimed in on the conference call and said "We don't see them [RIM] catching up [in terms of unit numbers of phones only]" I was like, wha? For real dawg? But it turns out Steve will most likely be right.



    But the first thing I want to say is that it should be illegal for them not to report sell through of the PlayBook. If I were an investor that is the first thing I would be concerned about as an irresponsible if not illegal act. Sell through could be as low as less than 100,000. Even 300,000 actual sell through after all the hype is a dismal number. The PlayBook as it stands is a clear failure and RIM not wanting to admit it is only going to delay the pain (and make it worse).



    What's even more concerning is that their QNX transition for phones is now in serious doubt, jeopardising their bread and butter BlackBerry ecosystem.
  • Reply 102 of 118
    cloudgazercloudgazer Posts: 2,161member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    But increasingly, more big businesses are saying that the iPhone is secure enough. And he's right about RIMs' network going down. It happened at least two times last year.



    Ok - I finally found one big bank that is trialling an iPhone mail solution:



    http://www.businessinsider.com/deuts...ood-app-2011-5



    Note the requirement to use a secure 3rd party App to do this, at least for the time being and that App requires back-end servers and software, presumably much like RIM's. If this takes off expect to see a legal attack on Good by RIM, because this really could eat their lunch.
  • Reply 103 of 118
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Cloud I get what you're trying to say in that RIM may not be dead so soon. But it's like they're flying at a pretty low speed at an awkward angle. Meaning they could fly on for a long time, or they may hit some turbulence or simply stall and then crash.



    Their corporate base will keep them "operational" but in today's unpredictable global economic climate you must sense that the wolves and vultures are circling.



    I said in another thread corporates can be vicious. Once a critical mass is reached corporate IT will shift to new technologies en mass. We've seen that with virtualisation and commoditisation of servers and storage. At some point iOS email will be "good enough". Just like the point where Dell off-the-shelf servers were good enough compared to a high-end Sun running Solaris.
  • Reply 104 of 118
    ankleskaterankleskater Posts: 1,287member
    Some may enjoy kicking RIM while it's down (http://bit.ly/k85QZQ). But here's hoping the company will recover. It would be good for the industry.
  • Reply 105 of 118
    joseph ljoseph l Posts: 197member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nvidia2008 View Post


    But the first thing I want to say is that it should be illegal for them not to report sell through of the PlayBook. If I were an investor that is the first thing I would be concerned about as an irresponsible if not illegal act. Sell through could be as low as less than 100,000. Even 300,000 actual sell through after all the hype is a dismal number.







    Seemingly, you believe that the likes of Best Buy, Staples, et. al. order stock in multiples of what they expect to sell. In the aggregate, you say that the likes of ATT, Sprint and Verizon order 5 units, but they are all wrong, and overestimated demand by a factor of 500%.



    Sorry, but that seems pretty damned far-fetched to me.
  • Reply 106 of 118
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    The arguments here are the exact opposite of when iOS began to stagnate in Market share relative to Android. Then, unit share mattered. Now platform reach matters.



    I agree on platform reach but people here argue the exact opposite point when the discussion turns to cheaper iPhones; then Apple isn't interested in Market share and what matters is high end unit growth and profit.
  • Reply 107 of 118
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Joseph L View Post


    Seemingly, you believe that the likes of Best Buy, Staples, et. al. order stock in multiples of what they expect to sell. In the aggregate, you say that the likes of ATT, Sprint and Verizon order 5 units, but they are all wrong, and overestimated demand by a factor of 500%.



    Sorry, but that seems pretty damned far-fetched to me.



    They can return.
  • Reply 108 of 118
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Joseph L View Post


    Seemingly, you believe that the likes of Best Buy, Staples, et. al. order stock in multiples of what they expect to sell. In the aggregate, you say that the likes of ATT, Sprint and Verizon order 5 units, but they are all wrong, and overestimated demand by a factor of 500%.



    Sorry, but that seems pretty damned far-fetched to me.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by asdasd View Post


    They can return.



    Or RIM could have pulled a Samsung and have a few hundred k units sitting smoothly in warehouses. That's why these are is total bulls*** "sales figures".
  • Reply 109 of 118
    cloudgazercloudgazer Posts: 2,161member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Joseph L View Post


    Seemingly, you believe that the likes of Best Buy, Staples, et. al. order stock in multiples of what they expect to sell. In the aggregate, you say that the likes of ATT, Sprint and Verizon order 5 units, but they are all wrong, and overestimated demand by a factor of 500%.



    Sorry, but that seems pretty damned far-fetched to me.



    As asdasd said they can return the unsold inventory and we know that sell through rates for Android tablets aren't great.



    For example the Galaxy tab is reporting total sales of 6million units as of April (source wiki), but we know from http://developer.android.com/resourc...d/screens.html that only 3% of the roughly 110million android devices have large screens - which would suggest more like 3.3mil have sold.



    Honeycomb tablets, primariliy the Xoom would be by the same estimation around 770k.
  • Reply 110 of 118
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by z3r0 View Post


    QNX is a nice clean and proven microkernel minus the baggage found in darwin. QNX also has some nice distributed OS features and security to boot (EAL4 vs Mac OS X EAL3).



    [...]



    Mac OS X's XNU kernel is a hybrid kernel based on the Mach microkernel... one of Mach's design goals was to support distributed computing which I imagine survives at some level.



    QNX predates Mach, so one would assume if there was anything of interest there, it would have been incorporated. Also one would assume that the same sort of hybridization would have occurred if Next/Apple had started with the QNX microkernel instead of Mach.
  • Reply 111 of 118
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by cloudgazer View Post


    Fine lets talk about a specific company within the IT industry - Microsoft. MS has been stagnant for years, with volatile profits that depend mostly on whether there is a new version of windows to push onto reluctant consumers. The IT industry as a whole has been vibrant in that time and their main competitor Apple has clearly grown gangbusters. But is MS toast? Not yet, no matter how much it would please me Neither is AMD toast in spite of their problems competing with Intel, badly damaged yes but still fighting and with an interesting offering in their new heterogeneous computing spiel.



    Heck for years Apple was stagnant within the computer industry. Slowly losing marketshare to PC, and yet it wasn't toast because it had some core loyal markets that stayed with it through the wilderness years. If RIM has such a core loyal market, and I contend that they do, then they are in far better shape than many of their rivals.



    MS is different. They have two monopolies, one declared, and one not declared. Because of that, and because they have such a large portion of the industry dependent on those monopolies, the fact that they're bot growi g rapidly any more is of little account. Today, Ms grows about the same rate as the industry as a whole, and no faster. Apple is slowly taking some of that market, but it's happening slowly. As long as the industry grows at a rate that's faster than Apple is biting off some of it, then MS will continue to grow. Ataxy rate, it's not MSs' core areas that are having major problems, it's the phone OS, and their Internet division. But we all know that MS isn't going away anytime soon.



    AMD sucks. They've always sucked, and likely always will. But they compete mainly in the area of discount chips where Intel isn't all that interested, so they'll survive.



    Apple had Steve Jobs come back. Who does RIM have to step in for these clowns? I'm not saying that RIM IS toast. I'm saying that if they aren't careful to do everything just right they could be toast. And this is what everyone else is sayin too.



    Quote:

    I'm certainly not saying that RIM are doing well, I'm not even saying that RIM are doing other than badly - I'm only saying that they're still not doing as badly as a bunch of other firms who aren't routinely spoken of as total basket cases.



    But that's not necessarily thru. Moto is not doing badly now. S-E is but they're not independent. And it doesn't matter how these companies are doing, as we're talking about RIM. Don't get off track here. RIMs' position is deteriorating quickly. they talk about how much cash they have, but it's not much. They talk about new products, but they're all a good six months late. They talk about they,re new OS, but it won't be out on phones until next year, and etc., etc.



    Top management is living in a fantasy world, and don't seem to have any idea that they are in trouble. They say that their transition is almost over, but it's barely begun.



    They tell us that they grew 69% in third works markets, but they gloss over the fact that fully half of their sales are on the USA, and there, they have lost actual sales as well as marketshare.



    Come on, they are in major trouble. Their window is closing rapidly. They don't have that much time to reverse it.



    Quote:

    Do you have a link for that survey? The reason I'm asking is that I'd like to know about the methodology used. Are they only looking at people who are buying their own phone for their own use and excluding enterprise users? f you surveyed my banker friend with 2 iPhones and a BB he'd say his next purchase is another iPhone, but there's no way his BB is going anywhere anytime soon.



    I thought I did.



    Quote:

    Let me be clear - I thnk that RIM is screwed in the consumer market, where it has been doing pretty well thanks to early adopter smartphone users and kids who like BBM. Neither of those categories will show any loyalty and the phones will lose out to equivalently priced Android phones in those markets.



    However that's not RIMs core market, and they can survive for a good long while without it - they may even be more interesting to a buyer without it as they'll be a purer enterprise play.



    But this is one of the major problems. Despite your friend, business is moving away from the BB. Geeze! You can find a hundred articles about that. It's nothing new. Almost everyone I know in business who had a BB now has an iPhone. And businesses are also give g them up for iPads, which are much better than phones for many business tasks. RIM had given an unofficial number of 6 million for Playbook sales this year, which now looks like it will actually be about one million shipped, not sold.



    Quote:

    We are but we can't talk about them in isolation. A big part of the problem for RIM and indeed for Android makers are the zombies Moto & S-E. They're in a slow death spiral, but as they slowly bleed share they price their phones aggressively and ruin margins for other players. There is nothing to stop RIM doing what everybody else has done, making a cheap knockoff iPhone 3GS, sticking a version of Android on it - though RIMs would obviously be a heavily locked down version - running their prop mail system on it and calling it a blackdroid. Frankly that's where I see RIM in 3 years time, if they aren't bought by a big player - as an niche enterprise Android maker.



    Whoa now. For years, RIMs sales have been bolstered by the BOGO sales around the fourth calendar quarter. They also have a lot of their phones given away for free. This has nothing to do with Moto and S-E. It has to do with Apple, and now successful Android phones, of which Motos' can be considered.



    RIM has been making knockoff iPhones since the first Storm. None have been successful.



    Quote:

    Nokia is a different story to the other incredible shrinking handset makers because they have so much IP that they will do well as a business even with their handset sales cratering. They also have global manufacturing capability which is both a blessing in that it gives them great access in markets like south america, and a curse because it makes shrinking so expensive for them. That's why I can't decide whether Nokia is in more trouble than RIM or less. They can certainly continue to flail for years without completely expiring.



    Nokia's in pretty big trouble as well. And now that Apple products will be made in Brazil, and sold there without the 40% tariff the Brazilian government imposes, iPhones and iPads will finally be competitive there. There are 220 million people in Brazil, and Brazil is a fast growing economy which is already The worlds seventh largest, very close in size to Britain, France and Germany. They're clamoring formApple products at reasonable prices, and soon they will get them. This will hurt RIM and Nokia.
  • Reply 112 of 118
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by cloudgazer View Post


    Ok - I finally found one big bank that is trialling an iPhone mail solution:



    http://www.businessinsider.com/deuts...ood-app-2011-5



    Note the requirement to use a secure 3rd party App to do this, at least for the time being and that App requires back-end servers and software, presumably much like RIM's. If this takes off expect to see a legal attack on Good by RIM, because this really could eat their lunch.



    Goodes' been around for years. Apples' products aren the only, or first ones that can be used with it.
  • Reply 113 of 118
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Joseph L View Post


    Seemingly, you believe that the likes of Best Buy, Staples, et. al. order stock in multiples of what they expect to sell. In the aggregate, you say that the likes of ATT, Sprint and Verizon order 5 units, but they are all wrong, and overestimated demand by a factor of 500%.



    Sorry, but that seems pretty damned far-fetched to me.



    Actually, this does happen often. It's called channel stuffing. Palm did it the first quarter the Pre came out. They reported a large number of phones shipped, but the next quarter, they reported a much smaller number. That was because so few of the phones actually sold, and they were piling up in the warehouses.



    Many companies use this tactic to make a quarter look good, with the hope that the next quarter will take up the slack. It rarely does.



    Here:



    http://financial-dictionary.thefreed...annel+Stuffing



    http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/s...3/daily44.html
  • Reply 114 of 118
    cloudgazercloudgazer Posts: 2,161member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    But this is one of the major problems. Despite your friend, business is moving away from the BB. Geeze! You can find a hundred articles about that. It's nothing new. Almost everyone I know in business who had a BB now has an iPhone. And businesses are also give g them up for iPads, which are much better than phones for many business tasks. RIM had given an unofficial number of 6 million for Playbook sales this year, which now looks like it will actually be about one million shipped, not sold.



    We have to distinguish between Business and Enterprise. Small firms will definitely be abandoning BB in droves, but it's surprisingly hard to find a big enterprise user who has. I could only turn up Dell, and they of course gave all their staff Dell handsets, so that doesn't really count - because frankly I'd probably use a BB before a Dell Venue Pro.



    Other big enterprises are running pilot programs, but they're still definitely at the big toe in the water stage.



    I agree with you pretty much completely on the iPad though. The playbook is DOA, not surprising given how badly thought out it was.
  • Reply 115 of 118
    bushman4bushman4 Posts: 858member
    RIMM had its day and started to rest on its achievements rather than research and developement. Many people had a Blackberry for the secure mail feature which is now not as hip as before since companies and individuals are shying away from Blackberries.

    Can RIM reinvent itself??? Are they good enough to bring about a new product not just a new model ??? Only time will tell .However at this point RIM looks Passae

    Apple cold be abig winner in this as corporations are flocking to Apple for their IPHONE.
  • Reply 116 of 118
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by BUSHMAN4 View Post


    RIMM had its day and started to rest on its achievements rather than research and development.



    Funny that a company called Research In Motion goes bankrupt because they sat on their laurels instead of researching and making a product different than one they made six years ago.
  • Reply 117 of 118
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    Wow. . .



    If you still have a place in your heart for Blackberry (my first smartphone), this letter to RIM management will get your attention.

    http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2011/06/...st-confidence/
  • Reply 118 of 118
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Gatorguy View Post


    Wow. . .



    If you still have a place in your heart for Blackberry (my first smartphone), this letter to RIM management will get your attention.

    http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2011/06/...st-confidence/



    It's a great example of how a company implodes.
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