There was an exchange between James T. Kirk and Spock regarding a proposed bailout of the beleaguered Klingon Empire.
- Kirk: Don’t believe them. Don’t trust them.
- Spock: They are dying.
- Kirk: Let them die.
Today, the Klingons in question do not have boney ridges on their foreheads. They have no cloaking devices or batleths in their arsenal. The only real similarity between Research In Motion (RIM) and the Klingon Empire is the thought that, “perhaps today is a good day to die.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFxGPI1Uvlg
For the 5th consecutive quarter, RIM missed their earnings estimate. This prompted chopping at the top with former co-CEO Jim Balsillie leading a star-studded cast of casualties with his resignation from the board of directors. CTO David Yach and COO Jim Rowan were among the lost.
A time will come when the company will need to unwind completely and sell its assets while it still has them. Despite shipping 11 million BlackBerries and a half-million PlayBooks last quarter, they still lost $125 million, their first loss since 2005. The tone of the earnings call made it clear they’re looking for a bailout.
“The next few quarters will continue to be challenging for our business,” said CEO Thorsten Heins.
They confirmed that they will look into licensing the both their platform and services, but it’s possible that nobody will be interested. This time last year the company was banking on the potential of launching the BlackBerry 10 by now, but late 2012 appears to be the most optimistic expectation.
By then, it may be too late.
There was good news. Cashflow was up around $200 million giving them just over $2 billion in the bank. Their new CEO seems aggressive and willing to make the tough decisions. The biggest problem they face is that they’re already yesterday’s technology in they eyes of many of their core customers: corporate America and corporate world.
The iPhone and to some extent Android have made a huge dent in RIM’s potential by scooping up users in the business sector that BlackBerry once owned. They needed BlackBerry 10 to come out before more people ran for the hills and that didn’t happen. When (if) it does come out in a few months, it will need to be able to let users walk on water if they plan on taking that part of the mobile world back under their wing.
Chances of it being enough are next to nil. That isn’t stopping a sense of hope in the concept that BB10 will be a platform instead of just a product.
The company seems poised to pursue two arenas: partnership/sale and enterprise solutions. They face major competition on the enterprise with Microsoft and Google making plays with a larger spectrum of connected services available. The only real solution, it would seem, would be to allow the company to be bought. Even licensing at this point is unrealistic as the only real asset they have that anyone would want is marketshare.
They’re shipping 80% fewer BlackBerries than they were a year ago.
Heins will try for the next several months to right a ship that went terribly wrong the last two years. They spread themselves out too thin and didn’t deliver the technology that their users craved. They will try to refocus, but in the end they will need to sell. That is where the real future of the company lies and it’s time to reposition the company as a nice catch for a bigger fish rather than a drowning competitor.
Otherwise, Kirk and Spock might as well have been talking about RIM.
No doubt about it dude I think you are 100% right.
http://www.Total-Privacy dot US
No doubt about it dude, I think you are 100% spam.
“their first loss since 2005”
DEAD
They should dump all their existing software and hardware. Make their own android line of phones and sink a good percentage of that 2 billion into making management software so companies can manage and control their phones. Build application servers, email servers, IVRs and hardline telco integration, etc.IE make all the bank-end stuff turn-key for businesses. They owned corporate cell phones because they made phones so much easier to manage, but they did nothing while others massively improved the functionality of phone. Their gear is still pathetic, they can’t compete when they have to design and code everything from scratch. Build a competent android phone and use all their resources to do to the enterprise management of phones what google and apple did to the phone itself.
exactly. they should just integrate their security software/blackberry specific features into an android shell. they would kill it. im an iphone guy and i think that this would make a killing… and and and if they marketed it like “NOW YOU CAN GET THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS”. fuck man people would eat that shits asshole.
That’s actually a pretty good idea!
However so many companies inevitably make the mistake of clinging to what made them great in the past. Inertia of the past and status quo is massive in large corporates.
It will take tremendous effort, passion and courage, to do what you are saying, and it’s a huge gamble.
Kirk (Android/iOS) was on the wrong side of history, though. He was blinded by prejudice and emotion over the death of his son (RIM…existing?). It was only because Spock basically forced him to play the role of peacemaker, did Jim eventually come around and do the right thing.
We’d have to actually believe that it would be the ‘right thing’ to keep RIM alive in order for this analogy to work. :)(Side note: It was a rather ballsy choice to make Kirk essentially racist, willing to let a whole species implode on itself. But…it was complicated, realistic, and made sense given the circumstances. A great flick, and a perfect send-off for an amazing cast. And yes, this bit is off topic.)
A Y/Y loss in unit sales of 80 percent implies that if their retailers quit buying stock completely, they might still never run out of inventory. That’s not good.
A Y/Y loss in unit sales of 80 percent implies that if their retailers quit buying stock completely, they might still never run out of inventory. That’s not good.
The only thing Blackberry’s have over Android or iPhone is security. This is enticing for business but the first secure Android will bulldoze them. The question is simply “when?”
The only thing Blackberry’s have over Android or iPhone is security. This is enticing for business but the first secure Android will bulldoze them. The question is simply “when?”
Well, the US Govt. put together a secure build of Android a few weeks ago, and they’re posting that project as free and open source. If Google wanted to, they could just copy & paste all of those modifications into a new build of Android. Or if a handset manufacturer wanted to sell direct to business, they could just take the govt. build on their phones and sell it direct. They’re already going to have to do that to sell to federal agencies, and the states will probably want to get in on that too.
So many comments, heh nice.
by forcing them to crack open the farce of enterprise security that they claim, they will open up their platforms to phones that consumers actually like to carry. Workers happy= more productive workers.
This was fixed, sorry!