Apple's iPhone 5 expected to 'steamroll' RIM's BlackBerry 7 phones
Following a poor earnings report this week, Research in Motion's woes are expected to continue with the impending launch of Apple's fifth-generation iPhone.
As RIM begins to ramp-up availability of devices running its new BlackBerry 7 mobile operating system, Apple is expected to hold an event in the coming weeks to announce its fifth-generation iPhone. That next iPhone, in the eyes of analyst Brian White with Ticonderoga Securities, will "steamroll" RIM's BlackBerry 7 lineup.
White said RIM's BlackBerry fresh was simply too little, too late, and the Canadian company's struggles will only add to Apple's momentum. He sees that momentum going "off the charts" in October, when Apple's so-called "iPhone 5" is expected to debut.
As for RIM's PlayBook, White sees the touchscreen tablet following in the footsteps of HP's TouchPad with a potential discontinuation. He said the PlayBook is poised to be the "next casualty of iPad's tablet dominance."
RIM announced on Thursday that it shipped 10.6 million BlackBerry phones and 200,000 PlayBooks in the previous quarter. Its profits were down 47 percent year over year, and sales came in well below Wall Street estimates.
For the next quarter, RIM gave investors guidance for revenue of between $5.3 billion and $5.6 billion, with BlackBerry shipments forecast to be 13.5 million to 14.5 million. But White said he finds it tough to take RIM's "optimistic output" seriously.
"Having repeatedly provided an overly optimistic outlook and the iPhone 5 poised to launch soon, we believe RIMM will again come up short," he wrote in his note to investors.
As RIM begins to ramp-up availability of devices running its new BlackBerry 7 mobile operating system, Apple is expected to hold an event in the coming weeks to announce its fifth-generation iPhone. That next iPhone, in the eyes of analyst Brian White with Ticonderoga Securities, will "steamroll" RIM's BlackBerry 7 lineup.
White said RIM's BlackBerry fresh was simply too little, too late, and the Canadian company's struggles will only add to Apple's momentum. He sees that momentum going "off the charts" in October, when Apple's so-called "iPhone 5" is expected to debut.
As for RIM's PlayBook, White sees the touchscreen tablet following in the footsteps of HP's TouchPad with a potential discontinuation. He said the PlayBook is poised to be the "next casualty of iPad's tablet dominance."
RIM announced on Thursday that it shipped 10.6 million BlackBerry phones and 200,000 PlayBooks in the previous quarter. Its profits were down 47 percent year over year, and sales came in well below Wall Street estimates.
For the next quarter, RIM gave investors guidance for revenue of between $5.3 billion and $5.6 billion, with BlackBerry shipments forecast to be 13.5 million to 14.5 million. But White said he finds it tough to take RIM's "optimistic output" seriously.
"Having repeatedly provided an overly optimistic outlook and the iPhone 5 poised to launch soon, we believe RIMM will again come up short," he wrote in his note to investors.
Comments
Sounds to me like Google might try.
I think Apple certainly aught to.
I second the idea that Apple might want to buy Rim, although might as well wait another couple of quarters so that their value halves.
So who's gonna buy RIM?
Sounds to me like Google might try.
I think Apple certainly aught to.
Nah, Google is buying Motorola. Even Google's smart enough to know that picking up another handset company would make integration really challenging. Google will have its hands full just trying to integrate Motorola. Their company cultures are really far apart and I suspect the acquisition will not go well.
Apart from any patent portfolio, RIM has very little of value to Apple.
RIM would garner more interest from someone with no presence in telephony (e.g., Dell, Acer) or another handset manufacturer that has no presence in North America or on the high end (some of the Chinese manufacturers would qualify here).
I use an iPhone at work, mostly because our President wanted one and I had to support it - but 99% of our users run Blackberry's. I honestly think Blackberry's are a better product in the corporate world, but as we all know Apple is the media darling so gets all the headlines and therefore mindshare.
So who's gonna buy RIM?
Sounds to me like Google might try.
I think Apple certainly aught to.
Buy RIM for what? To own a line of smart phones that are basically, obsolete? RIM will just fall by the wayside much faster than we think.
Seems to me that RIM has just about reached that tipping point where millions upon millions of smart phone buyers are independently but simultaneously deciding that they're not getting a Blackberry for their next phone. That's how sales collapses happen, first you see a gradual erosion of demand and you project that into the future thinking there's enough time for the mfr to fix things, then people notice that their friends and relatives aren't buying the product anymore and they decide they'll follow suit then BAM! the gradual erosion turns into a downward spiral.
When the iPhone first came out, I said RIMM is already dead they just don't know it yet. They're starting to know.
As a Canadian I feel sad about this. It seems like it's been a never ending stream of great companies - Corel, ATI, Nortel, and now RIM that reach a certain level of success and then get gobbled up by the American behemoths down south.
I use an iPhone at work, mostly because our President wanted one and I had to support it - but 99% of our users run Blackberry's. I honestly think Blackberry's are a better product in the corporate world, but as we all know Apple is the media darling so gets all the headlines and therefore mindshare.
More than any other smart phone manufacturer, RIM had their chance. With absolutely no vision at the top they failed to innovate. Death soon follows when blood stops being pumped to the brain.
Buy RIM for what? To own a line of smart phones that are basically, obsolete? RIM will just fall by the wayside much faster than we think.
One more year and they are gone. iPhone 5 will bury them. Last year I thought they might have 3 years left but, sadly, their ship is almost at a 90 degree angle in the water.
RIM isn't going anywhere anytime soon. They are still heavy in the enterprise market. Maybe they spin off their consumer market.
Is the enterprise market big enough to generate profits that can fund the kind of R&D that RIM needs to keep up with Apple, Google & (maybe) Microsoft? Remember, RIMs problems are rooted in their failure to keep pace with the rival smart phones' technology.
Is the enterprise market big enough to generate profits that can fund the kind of R&D that RIM needs to keep up with Apple, Google & (maybe) Microsoft? Remember, RIMs problems are rooted in their failure to keep pace with the rival smart phones' technology.
That's the great unknown.
I honestly think Blackberry's are a better product in the corporate world, but as we all know Apple is the media darling so gets all the headlines and therefore mindshare.
Its strange to me how the Apple detractors always seem to come out with the line that Apple is successful because the media love them - implying the consumers are sheep who simply do what the media tell them to.
The question that these people have to answer is why is Apple the media darling (assuming that it is)?
Apple doesn't have consumer mindshare because it is the media darling, it is the media darling because it has consumer mindshare
As a Canadian I feel sad about this. It seems like it's been a never ending stream of great companies - Corel, ATI, Nortel, and now RIM that reach a certain level of success and then get gobbled up by the American behemoths down south.
I use an iPhone at work, mostly because our President wanted one and I had to support it - but 99% of our users run Blackberry's. I honestly think Blackberry's are a better product in the corporate world, but as we all know Apple is the media darling so gets all the headlines and therefore mindshare.
This is the kind of thinking that has destroyed RIM's ability to compete. Apple's success with the iPhone and iPad is not due to their being "the media darling", but rather due to their re-inventing how people communicate and compute in their daily lives, their personal and business lives.
What RIM has done is this:
a. Mock every new innovation from Apple and others, then…
b. Rush a "me too" device, poorly implemented, out the door, then…
c. Boast of upcoming products and how awesome they will be, but…
d. The boasts are always based on engineering specs, "feeds and speeds" as Steve Jobs said, about which consumers care not at all, and…
e. Fail to deliver those in a timely fashion.
That RIM's frantic efforts to mislead and misdirect the press regarding their finances and prospects, does not help, either.
Physical keyboards and secure, proprietary (and expensive) messaging did not stave off the decline, and they will not reverse it. They have nothing else to offer, at all.
QNX will not reverse the slide, for the simple reason that no one cares what kernel their phone uses, only the quality of the ecosystem, and RIM has no track record of creating a compelling ecosystem.
The bald truth is this: RIM is a phone company aspiring to compete with computer companies. They have no experience looking back, and no vision looking forward.
RIM isn't going anywhere anytime soon. They are still heavy in the enterprise market. Maybe they spin off their consumer market.
RIM's current predicament is a result of being dumped by the enterprise. Their only growth was coming from new markets (read: the consumer market in Asia). They're now so screwed on their home turf that moving into new markets can't help them. So, no, they're not still heavy in the enterprise market.
Apart from any patent portfolio, RIM has very little of value to Apple.
Apple could merge iMessage with BBM. That would handily stable RIM's one trick pony into the Apple barn.
What a pointless news story. I notice you didn't bother to add anything about Android 'steamrolling' iOS, as it will inevitably continue to do.
No one stays on top forever. The mighty fall at last. All of them.
Buy RIM for what? To own a line of smart phones that are basically, obsolete?
Are you KIDDING ME?!
Buy them FOR THE PATENTS.
So who's gonna buy RIM?
Sounds to me like Google might try.
I think Apple certainly aught to.
Google doesn't need RIM and Apple's technology stack is completely different than RIM's. In addition to that RIM is catering to corporate market, where end users have phones shoved down their throats weather they like them or not (this is also why RIM is unprepared to compete in the consumer market, they never had to make a phone and OS that are usable, with low tech support needs).
RIM has strong Microsoft culture, their enterprise department is almost like subsidiary of Microsoft (heavily in MS technology stack, with open hostility towards any technologies/programming languages that don't come from Redmond). And even the mobile group is clamoring to develop mobile BB apps in C# rather than Java.
However, the reality is that up to now RIM has had a lot of investment into Java, but that is changing with QNX acquisition. So, it would make more sense for Microsoft to buy RIM, considering Microsoft wants to fight for the third place in the mobile world (according to what we heard recently during Window 8 announcements), which RIM currently occupies. At the current stock price, RIM is a bargain.
What a pointless news story. I notice you didn't bother to add anything about Android 'steamrolling' iOS, as it will inevitably continue to do.
I'm not sure if Android is steamrolling iOS or not. However, what I am sure of is that there is no single handset manufacturer steamrolling iPhones.
Remember iOS is iPhone + IPad + iPod Touch + AppleTV. If you're going to compare operating systems, you need all the devices that run it. If you're going to compare handset manufacturers, you look at handsets.
I use an iPhone at work, mostly because our President wanted one and I had to support it - but 99% of our users run Blackberry's. I honestly think Blackberry's are a better product in the corporate world, but as we all know Apple is the media darling so gets all the headlines and therefore mindshare.
My wife just started a new job 6 weeks ago working in corporate HR at a Fortune 100 company. Her previous job was also at a Fortune 100 company (also corporate). At both companies she was given a Blackberry as were all of her peers. The trend lately has been that she, along with several of her co-workers opt to use Good for Enterprise to access their corporate email from their iDevices.
Just this week she made a comment to me that the only reason she carries around her Blackberry at all is in case she has someone call her on it and she needs to answer. Otherwise she doesn't like to use it. She finds it clunky, slow and somewhat awkward. Keep in mind she had been using a Blackberry for years before she got her first iPhone, she was used to using them.
I realize I'm using my wife as the example but several of her peers are doing the same thing. And, it seems, once they switch there is no desire to turn back. She recently convinced a coworker to try out Good on her iPad. She was slightly reluctant at first but now loves it.
To me this all looks bad for Blackberry even in the corporate world, where they got their start in the first place.