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RIM reports Q4 miss; Balsillie resigns as director, CTO out

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Re: RIM reports Q4 miss; Balsillie resigns as director, CTO out

#51

Post by rikthevik »

martinshen wrote: post #42

RIM's greatest issue has been LEGACY. RIM's focus on the enterprise ensures that a large number of their staff has to build hacks to ensure their software's backwards compatibility. Forget the entire "Flash as being dated" debacle and think more to the tune of Microsoft's Exchange servers and address databases from the 80s which RIM has to be compatible with. Naturally, companies must decide whether they want to ditc…

This may not be a great place to make this request, but can someone write up a detailed blog post on how the new SR&ED changes are going to affect us? I would love some more perspective on this issue.

Re: RIM reports Q4 miss; Balsillie resigns as director, CTO out

#52

Post by justincormack »

duopixel wrote: post #18
cshenoy wrote: post #7

Serious question: What viable options do they have besides being acquired?

I see tons of BlackBerries in Mexico, when three years ago there were none. They have become an affordable phone here that works just fine for Facebook, email and chatting. In a certain sense they are the old reliable Nokias of yesteryear. I don't pretend to play analyst, but I think there's a huge market in producing affordable and sturdy smartphones for third world countries. To many it's their only way to get onli…

Same with kids in the developed world - the uk riots were organized by BBM last summer.

Re: RIM reports Q4 miss; Balsillie resigns as director, CTO out

#53

Post by rkwz »

Silhouette wrote: post #29
vladimirm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The company also said that it will dial back efforts in multiple consumer markets and refocus its efforts on the enterprise market." -- I think this a smart move because they make business-oriented devices, not entertainment devices, but it might be too late.

I don't think it's ever too late in a tech market as long as your company still has enough funds to launch and market one more product. After all, if you'd looked at pre-iEverything Apple a few years ago and claimed they would be the most valuable company in the world today, most people would have laughed. That said, RIM clearly has an uphill struggle ahead of it. They need a smash hit, which means they need people w…

>I don't think it's ever too late in a tech market as long as your company still has enough funds to launch and market one more product.

This is something we see over and over again in this industry. Yet, people still don't believe it.

Re: RIM reports Q4 miss; Balsillie resigns as director, CTO out

#54

Post by josteink »

RIM said it shipped 11.1 million BlackBerry smartphones and more than 500,000 PlayBook tablets last quarter.

I absolutely refuse to believe those numbers. I've seen noone with a Blackberry tablet and I'm surrounded by geeks at home and at work.

Spotting Android-tablets is hard enough (I have one and besides that I know one other guy IRL which does as well), but Playbooks are practically non-existent.

Re: RIM reports Q4 miss; Balsillie resigns as director, CTO out

#55

Post by drieddust »

redwood wrote: post #44
brisance wrote: post #25

RIMM made some major mistakes but was too arrogant as the market leader to take the competition seriously. 1) They Osborne'd their product line by prematurely showing off new products that weren't ready. 2) They tried to meet the iPad head-on in the consumer market by calling their device a Playbook but their strength is in enterprise. Thus the marketing message came out confused and having a pompous "Amateur hour is…

Talking about terrible marketing: they're running an aggressive television campaign in India right now showing a bunch of singing business men in suits chiming "We are the blackberry boys...." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LducWACdt88 This is one of the most obnoxious, male-centric ads I've ever seen and would never float in the west. Sure it's India... but it's sad that a western company thinks it's cool to run som…

I am not sure about sexist angle but this clearly shows that blackberry have gone berserk.

They are trying to change their business centric image by alienating last remaining business users without having a foothold in consumer market.

In hindi there is an old saying "Vinash Kale Viprit Budhi" which roughly translates to rational brain stops working when end is near. :)

Re: RIM reports Q4 miss; Balsillie resigns as director, CTO out

#56

Post by _mayo »

josteink wrote: post #54

RIM said it shipped 11.1 million BlackBerry smartphones and more than 500,000 PlayBook tablets last quarter. I absolutely refuse to believe those numbers. I've seen noone with a Blackberry tablet and I'm surrounded by geeks at home and at work. Spotting Android-tablets is hard enough (I have one and besides that I know one other guy IRL which does as well), but Playbooks are practically non-existent.

Shipped does not always equal sold. They could be devices sitting on a palette in the back of some warehouse.
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