RIM death watch

[Pliablemoose]

RIM took a 10% plus haircut on it's stock today

They had good earnings, but cautioned investors and analysts that the PlayBook launch was going to be expensive.

Analysts responded by downgrading RIM.

Research in Motion (RIMM_) downgraded at Deutsche from Hold to Sell, Detusche Bank said. $50 price target. Company offered disappointing guidance.
Research in Motion (RIMM) downgraded at Baird from Neutral to Underperform, Robert Baird said. $47 price target. Company is facing increased domestic competition.

A write up from Seeking Alpha:

• Earnings and gross margin guidance was called "atrocious" by CNBC's Guy Adami. Guidance includes management's expectations on the Playbook launch, which it said would be a "big selling" product. VP Investor Relations Adele Ebbs said the Playbook would be lower margin than RIM's corporate margins (41% in the quarter). Lower average selling prices on products and higher marketing expenses were given as other reasons for lower margins. Margin compression is expected despite an increased product mix of the relatively high-margin Blackberry 8520 and other products that are in the late-stage (nearing end-of-life) and thus are typically higher margin as well.
• Japan supply-chain issues with smart phone components are said to potentially impact revenue. This was said to be a reason for the larger range for earnings and revenue guidance.
• Management confirmed QNX-based "super phones" are coming in calendar 2012, and this was seen as somewhat of a surprise by RBC analyst Mike Abramsky. This led some analysts to ask whether there would be risk of a lack of uptake of RIM smart phones until next year. But Co-CEO Jim Balsillie claimed there was tremendous interest in this summer's new products based on OS 6.1 and they were positioned to be a major upgrade.
• Balsillie responded to a question about future entry level smart phones at lower price points, though these wouldn't be coming out this calendar year.
• Ebbs and Balsillie said there will be no new products other than the Playbook until fiscal Q2 (June-August) and Q3.
• Management statements hint that RIM overstuffed the sales channel at the end of last quarter though they also claimed inventories are lower because of higher sell-through. This seems contradictory but it wasn't explained further.
• On a positive note, RIM execs are forecasting much higher than expected earnings for fiscal year 2012 of $7.50, yet they didn't seem very confident in that forecast.
• The bottom line is that more than four years after the iPhone disrupted the industry, RIM's Blackberry OS products are no longer competitive at any price-point without margin deterioration. There is a now a lot of uncertainty and skepticism in RIM's product launch schedule, platform strategy, differentiation, and ability to execute and innovate at a level and pace competitive with Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG)

RIM falls to last place in JD Power's rankings:

http://www.bgr.com/2011/03/18/apple...-in-j-d-power-survey-rim-falls-to-last-place/

And another interesting read:

http://gizmodo.com/#!5785983/android-may-be-the-greatest-legal-destruction-of-wealth-in-history

I think RIM has about 18 months left as a major player in the North American market... What's really going to kill RIM is that if (when) they take another couple of haircuts on their stock price, and every time a CEO or upper management (or whatever the hell kind of job description/title they have... ) pulls out a BB, they're going to remember the stock price tanking, and associate BB's with failure, and they'll call IT and ask for shiny new iPhones or Android OS'd devices so they don't have to be reminded of RIM's fail... The JD Power's ranking is starting the ball rolling towards that end.

RIM is screwing up by throwing all that $ at the PlayBook, they should have sat out the tablet market for a few more months and worked on their phones first, tablets are a new exciting product category, but the bulk of their income is from phones, and the potential profits from a great selling tablet are nothing compared to what they could make by refreshing their phone line.

 

[Fire&Blood]

I hope they come up with products in the next 12 months to at least slow down the market share bleeding. Bad news is they are competing Android for the market share.


I think the portrait physical keyboard, their signature form factor was becoming obsolete 2 years ago yet RIM never adjusted, excluding the fail attempt with a phone not worth mentioning.

BB should have tried to compete with landscape sliding phones, both with their own and the Android OS to buy time to get it right with a mainstream touchscreen phone and their next OS to run it.

 

[BabaBooey]

No more RIM JOBS....

 

[boomhower]

The writing has been on the wall for a long time, RIM just hasn't read it. In the consumer space they became very popular but failed to innovate. In the corporate space they are still strong and can do some things the competition can't, but popular demand has them still loosing space. They have a lot of work to do if they don't want to become the next Nokia.

 

[smitbret]

Gimme a frickin' break. How many tech companies wish they were pulling in that kind of net revenue and still trading at $55/share. The death bell has been ringing for over a year now and somehow the heart keeps beating.... oh and strongly, too.

RIM 56.89
Motorola 43.95
Nokia 8.35

Investors don't seem to be that worried.

 

[Pliablemoose]

Gimme a frickin' break. How many tech companies wish they were pulling in that kind of net revenue and still trading at $55/share. The death bell has been ringing for over a year now and somehow the heart keeps beating.... oh and strongly, too.

RIM 56.89
Motorola 43.95
Nokia 8.35

Investors don't seem to be that worried.

Yesterday 53 million shares traded, the average is ~10 million.

(sometimes on a slow day, you see wide swings in a share price because of the small volumes, with few buyers and sellers, when you see that kind of volume, something is fundamentally changing in the value of the stock.)

They're becoming joke fodder already:

 

[speg]

I called this when I worked for them in 2007. Huge fail.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

From a corporate perspective RIM is going nowhere.


If MS actually gets their shit together with a half decent activesync management setup then RIM needs to worry.


Let's not even talk about apple's total failure in the business segment as another other than a toy.

 

[gophins72]

damnnit this definitely rains on my parade, i just bought a blackberry and really like it

 

[coxmaster]

They've sold more handsets this year than ever before.. sales are constantly increasing worldwide and they still have a large portion of the market sale.

Something tells me RIM isnt dead. They are just focusing more now on non-US markets.

 

[smitbret]

From a corporate perspective RIM is going nowhere.


If MS actually gets their shit together with a half decent activesync management setup then RIM needs to worry.


Let's not even talk about apple's total failure in the business segment as another other than a toy.

This is more dead on than you realize. The problem is all of the tech geeks that expect phone makers to be everything to everybody. Apple currently doesn't give two shits about being in the corporate world. Why would they and then have to spend ungodly amounts of $$$ on support. Blackberry doesn't wanna make toys like Apple does. MS and Android have yet to pick a segment and they'll filter off and mature eventually.

Need flash? Don't get Apple
Want a huge library of Apps? Don't get RIM
Want a phone that's also a great .mp3 player? iPhones rock and BB sucks
Do you like plugging your phone in every four hours? Get an Android

Every company has its niche. Ask Nokia how well trying to be everything to everyone has worked out.

 

[Slew Foot]

They deserve to die after putting out that POS known as the Storm.

 

[Pliablemoose]

LOL, I posted this in GG&P, and it got moved

 

[dmcowen674]

RIM death watch

RIM took a 10% plus haircut on it's stock today

They had good earnings, but cautioned investors and analysts that the PlayBook launch was going to be expensive.

Analysts responded by downgrading RIM.

A write up from Seeking Alpha:
RIM falls to last place in JD Power's rankings:

Blah blah blah

Same thing was said about Motorola

Yawn

 

[Crono]

They deserve to die after putting out that POS known as the Storm.

That phone was so terrible. Mostly it was the buggy OS.

Luckily, I broke the screen on mine early last year, forcing me to get a new phone while still on contract... ended up buying a Kin One for cheap.

Now I have a Windows 7 Phone, the Dell Venue Pro (aka Lightning).
It's great. Pretty much what I wanted that my Storm didn't deliver.

No ill feelings toward RIM. I hope the Playbook turns out like all the previews of it, it looks really good.

 

[Pliablemoose]

Blah blah blah

Same thing was said about Motorola

Yawn

Wait, you predict earthquakes and shit, and you disagree with me?

 

[yllus]

They're not going to be industry leaders, but the company will be around for a long time yet.

The fact that the PlayBook will be able to run Android applications is very interesting. I tend to think that we're getting into a more software centric future - hardware is uniformly good across the board and it's the "experience" that makes a product a winner. Apple's a great software company - RIM isn't, but they do understand the corporate space very well. A fair amount of executives where I work carry iPads, and we had the PlayBook in last week for a preview - it's promising. If they can come out with some killer apps for the PlayBook and convert some of execs around here to it, that'll help immensely.

 

[silverpig]

Once they get QNX tuned up for their phones and re-work their phone lineup they'll be back on track. If they stick with just a Bold, Curve, Storm, and Torch, but do each really well, then they'll have a winner.

 

[Pliablemoose]

They're not going to be industry leaders, but the company will be around for a long time yet.

What the analysts are trying to figure out is if the iPad has become the second iPod type device, where it just kills the competition and it's name becomes synonymous with the devices in the category, or if it'll be like the iPhone and spawn some worthy competitors, but continue to sell well.

I think the bit about Android being a disruptive OS is fairly accurate, if Google doesn't horribly screw it up, I think they're looking at a huge % share of mobile OS's for a long time...

 

[coxmaster]

I hope the Playbook turns out like all the previews of it, it looks really good.

I hope so too, I should have one shortly after release so we'll see how it performs.

 

[Wyndru]

Even after blackberry is releasing all these cool apps that do innovative things like telling you where to get food based on where you currently are?

They are bleeding edge man, bleeding edge.

 

[0roo0roo]

No more RIM JOBS....

oh hoh hoh...that was the first thing that came to mind as well

 

[Zstream]

That phone was so terrible. Mostly it was the buggy OS.

Luckily, I broke the screen on mine early last year, forcing me to get a new phone while still on contract... ended up buying a Kin One for cheap.

Now I have a Windows 7 Phone, the Dell Venue Pro (aka Lightning).
It's great. Pretty much what I wanted that my Storm didn't deliver.

No ill feelings toward RIM. I hope the Playbook turns out like all the previews of it, it looks really good.

I can't say much about the playbook because of NDA but it won't be a game changer in the enterprise business for sure. Just wait and find out about the BES limitations of the device.

 

[Imp]

They've sold more handsets this year than ever before.. sales are constantly increasing worldwide and they still have a large portion of the market sale.

Something tells me RIM isnt dead. They are just focusing more now on non-US markets.

As a stock traded on the TSX and NASDAQ (right?), they are probably dead for the foreseeable future. RIM's been one of the worst tech performers since the market crash in 2008/2009. I've made some money off RIM from speculative trading the past few months, but am completely put off now. They're putting a lot of money and faith into Playbook - Xoom, Galaxy have done really well, huh? Oh, and iPad 2 just came out.

Corporately, they're fine. They have sales, they have international markets. If Nokia and Motorola are alive, I don't see how RIM can't stay afloat.

 

[dwell]

From a corporate perspective RIM is going nowhere.


If MS actually gets their shit together with a half decent activesync management setup then RIM needs to worry.


Let's not even talk about apple's total failure in the business segment as another other than a toy.

You kidding? iPad + Good is chipping away at RIM, little by little.

http://iphonegeartalk.com/iphone-gear-talk/survey-corporate-ipad-adoption-jumps-thanks-to-businesses

Every move in the mobile space these days seems to be at the expense of RIM. Both iOS and Android are growing at the expense of the old guard: RIM and Symbian.