[Exiled Bulldawg]

Yeah true I agree that socialism typically doesn't work...it has been shown to work in some places (Denmark, Norway, Sweden) but not in others.

It's kinda like pointing at our economy and situation and stating "capitalism doesn't work". It does, like anything else, it depends on several metrics.

I love how a discussion on Apple, Google, and RIM somehow turned into socialism/capitalism/Greece.

It wasn't capitalism that got us to this point. It was a mandate from Congress via the Department of Housing and Urban Development to increase home ownership 10 percentage points. And oddly enough, about 10 percent of all loans went bad. On top of that, the CDO's and other derivatives don't require both parties actually OWN the underlying assets. This is far from over, and the securities regulations proposed don't even begin to fix the problem. Remember the gas bubble a couple of years ago? Read the Great American Bubble Machine on Rolling Stone Magazine's site and it makes sense.

Either way, to the topic of RIM's strategy, they sent me a survey today, I only got to answer one question and wrote a reason for why I felt like I do. It won't matter, Balsillie has stated their strategy is "conservation of data," as if it is truly scarce. 4G networks are coming online, and they greatly expand the available bandwidth greatly. As best as I can tell, only backhaul from remote sites will be scarce, as there will be two different networks...

[_StephenBB81]

Really? You used Greece as an example? When your country has gone damn near bankrupt because they spent money like its water and they don't have the flexibility to adjust their currency (most of us across the pond knew the Euro was a stupid idea) then the last thing people who are unemployed or just had my wages slashed, "What smartphone should I get now?" would be the last thing going through my mind.

Palm failed because they ignored the threat Blackberry poised...kinda like what RIM, to a certain degree, is doing with Apple and Google.

Unfortunately this is a very true statement!

I think RIM is Starting to realize the risk Apple and Google pose to their bread and butter market, and OS6 will very much be a major example of the vision RIM has, will it be a fresh feel to the BB to put up a good fight? or will it be an all words shouting match ultimately leaving BB more ground to catch up with.

RIM is smarter than Palm, only because they have Palm to look at and see trends, RIM is doing more focus on getting its Margins up, since may they have seen an increase in Margins, so the BOTTOM feeding as people are saying isn't completely the case, or they would see Margins slipping, though because of the competition the Gross margin is not were it was at it's Peak.

[Exiled Bulldawg]

Unfortunately this is a very true statement!

I think RIM is Starting to realize the risk Apple and Google pose to their bread and butter market, and OS6 will very much be a major example of the vision RIM has, will it be a fresh feel to the BB to put up a good fight? or will it be an all words shouting match ultimately leaving BB more ground to catch up with.

RIM is smarter than Palm, only because they have Palm to look at and see trends, RIM is doing more focus on getting its Margins up, since may they have seen an increase in Margins, so the BOTTOM feeding as people are saying isn't completely the case, or they would see Margins slipping, though because of the competition the Gross margin is not were it was at it's Peak.

RIM's margins from about 6 quarters ago were about 50%. That explains why the stock price is falling off. So, I wouldn't say the margins are up. Seems they are lower than previous, though revenue is up and accordingly absolute margin dollars are up. Further, the patent infringement settlement was a huge drag on cash flow. How many other infringement suits are waiting to be settled?

If RIM were learning from Palm's debacle, they would have released a webkit a year ago. Unfortunately, RIM seems to buy other companies to make up for its lack of innovation, which means the acquired company's technology and human assets must be rolled into the operation. That slows things down. Organic growth is much better, as it is sustainable.

BTW, love the signature, it illustrates the point about margins declining over last 10 quarters (2.5 years.)

[_StephenBB81]

RIM's margins from about 6 quarters ago were about 50%. That explains why the stock price is falling off. So, I wouldn't say the margins are up. Seems they are lower than previous, though revenue is up and accordingly absolute margin dollars are up. Further, the patent infringement settlement was a huge drag on cash flow. How many other infringement suits are waiting to be settled?

If RIM were learning from Palm's debacle, they would have released a webkit a year ago. Unfortunately, RIM seems to buy other companies to make up for its lack of innovation, which means the acquired company's technology and human assets must be rolled into the operation. That slows things down. Organic growth is much better, as it is sustainable.

BTW, love the signature, it illustrates the point about margins declining over last 10 quarters (2.5 years.)

I am ONLY talking the last quarter, they have JUST finally started to grow margins again, looking over the last 10, yes they are no where near where they used to be, BUT go back then and how many players where in the market? look at what data costs where, compared to now.

RIM is too "old boys club" to grow organically the smartphone market exploded way faster than they could have expected, and really apple played a game changer, I don't think RIM could have thought 1 year ago how much mobile browsing would matter, if you look at corporate BB contracts 2 years ago, at least in Canada, very few BB users had greater than 50MB of data, so internet surfing was NOT a major goal for them, it should have been but I can understand why it didn't go through, they left it up to 3rd party developers, just like they did with MS office editing, unfortunately NO ONE came to the plate with a viable alternative to the BB Browser for BB to include so now they have to build it them selves.

2010 had been a HUGE year for the smartphone and RIM just doesn't have the development team/ maybe the vision to compete on the consumer market, really I am of the opinion they shouldn't have made the webkit browser but instead threw some money into the mozilla foundation to get firefox to the BB, USE a brandname, apple has safari, google has chrome, BB grab firefox and work on extension support that would be something different for the BB! but I fear webkit will be a "just enough" browser to level that part of the playing field.

lucky the browser really for me is irrelevant, I don't use it more than 1 hour a month

[belfastdispatcher]

Lol, I was actually talking about Romania. I think it's very important for Rim to have lower priced handsets for people in these situations, when they're trying to ride out the recession. It keeps them in the blackberry system and when they're ready to move up they'll upgrade to the better models.
Rim is playing it smart. Regarding bandwith and blackberry efficiency, think China and the amount of handsets per cell tower and it's probably scary numbers. I do have a feeling the 9300 will take China by storm. Would the 9700 sell in the same numbers there? I don't think so, let alone android or iphones.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[avt123]

2010 had been a HUGE year for the smartphone and RIM just doesn't have the development team/ maybe the vision to compete on the consumer market, really I am of the opinion they shouldn't have made the webkit browser but instead threw some money into the mozilla foundation to get firefox to the BB, USE a brandname, apple has safari, google has chrome, BB grab firefox and work on extension support that would be something different for the BB! but I fear webkit will be a "just enough" browser to level that part of the playing field.

Maemo uses FF already. BB could have picked them up as well though.

[_StephenBB81]

Maemo uses FF already. BB could have picked them up as well though.

I agree,
I think BB could throw money behind it and get the mozilla foundation to work on an open browser, then continued development gets to happen outside their doors, and frees up resources for things like better calendar, and user management

[yungcrum]

Droids and iphones are known for the fun stuff (games, app, ect) but BB's are still the best and most reliable messaging devices. They are also more secure than other smartphones. BB's could use a more innovation (especially the browser) but when it comes to the basic smartphone functions its still better than anything out there. I recently went to the apple store to see what the new iphone 4 was about and i was impressed with the screen resolution, build quality, browser, apps, and games. The one thing i didn't like about the iphone was the messaging. I text, email, and IM (especially on BBM) and the iphone just doesn't compare to BB's when it comes to messaging. I would rather keep my BB for my primary phone and get an ipad or ipod touch on the side to have access to games and apps. I really wish RIM would add a faster processor and more internal memory to their devices to prevent lag and freezing.

[dcorx]

Actually I do teach at a gifted and talented school. But even at the school I was at previous to this one which was a normal public school in a lower middle class/upper lower class area and nearly all kids have cell phones and it is not uncommon at all to see them with Blackberrys. More Blackberrys than iPhones and Droids.

I had a chance to visit my daughters school which is up in Weatherford which is very much a hick town and it was the same story.

I always have the wondeful pleasure of chaperoning the dances and the students will bring dates from other schools. Quite a few iPhones and Droids but a lot more Blackberrys.

More blackberrys here in vancouver then iphones and droids.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[davidnc]

More blackberrys here in vancouver then iphones and droids.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

...For now ,