[dasdas1]

Unlike some companies, corporate IT departments are there for an obvious reason - to prevent their company's information and assets from being stolen or viewed by unauthorized parties. You may want to read some news, articles and case studies on corporate espionage, data mining and specific hacking if you think the IT departments are just mere barriers.

If you look at ipads as BMWs, then I look at Playbooks as lightweight tanks. You should do a bit more reading and research on the Playbooks - you will find that their specifications and potential are far beyond any ipad ;-)

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

There is a certain segment of corporate America that suffers from paranoia over security issues. In a few cases (eg: banks, stockbrokers, etc) those concerns are actually justified. I doubt that there has been any corporate espionage enabled by iPhones that would have been prevented by Blackberries.

[jthep]

Under $10 a share? Currently the company is far too large, has too much cash, around 3 billion. A market cap of close to 20 billion. To get to $10 a share to company would take save years of utter failure to do. If anything, the stock price looking at the numbers is probably undervalued, but guidance in future earnings has caused it to dive.

Its tough for anyone to buy out a company with a market cap so large. Probably only Apple could realistically do it, but would make no sense for Apple to do. What are they going to do sell iPhones and Blackberries? Highly doubt it.

Could Microsoft buy out RIM? It would be a tall order and being that Nokia already has deals in place for Windows phones, why would Microsoft get involved in two major phone manufactures like that?

I think RIM will be around for quite awhile, too big to acquire at this point. Regardless, I luv the BB brand and could not see myself being another mindless iPhone user. Android phones are tempting, but their battery life has always been a major problem for me.

[dasdas1]

If you look at ipads as BMWs, then I look at Playbooks as lightweight tanks. You should do a bit more reading and research on the Playbooks - you will find that their specifications and potential are far beyond any ipad ;-)

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

Surely you jest! I mean, c'mon. Stop it with the nonsense please. With the iPad you get the iTunes ecosystem with about half a million apps including some seriously great apps like Pages, Numbers, WS Scanner, Wolfram Alpha, StreamToMe, Keynote, Netflix, SketchbookX, LogMeIn (remote control PC and Mac), Photoshop Express, etc. You get the 10 inch screen (costs a whole lot more than a 7 inch screen). You get 3G connectivity, eMail, a full ten hour battery life, and the rest of the stuff that Playbook left out.

[dasdas1]

Under $10 a share? Currently the company is far too large, has too much cash, around 3 billion. A market cap of close to 20 billion. To get to $10 a share to company would take save years of utter failure to do. If anything, the stock price looking at the numbers is probably undervalued, but guidance in future earnings has caused it to dive.

Well it went from $64 to $27 in a heartbeat. $10 isn't that far off based on current trajectory.

[jthep]

I think you are overrating the iOS "eco-system". I still have iTunes on my PC, but converted all my files to the Amazon Cloud Player and will probably shop for music on Amazon from now on.

Why? I can access over 20 gigs of dl music on my 16gig Playbook using the Amazon Cloud Player. Not bad. iTunes is still the big dog in the game, but not the only game in town any more.

iPods are outdated as any smartphone worth a damn can be used as an MP3 player. Is it really that hard to convert all your itunes to the BB Desktop Manager and dl them to a BB?

iPhone is the same thing every year with new problems with one more over hyped illogical impractical feature that marketing will convince you, you cannot live without. Good media device, but not so great for typing or actual phone calls.

iPads have a huge upside and are the "it" thing right now. But once again, for me, its more practical and cost efficient to buy a Playbook and use my BB to share data through BB Bridge rather than spending an extra $300 a year for a separate data plan and another $300 for a more expensive 3G device.

Don't get me wrong, the iOS "eco-system'' is impressive, but only people that know nothing about computing rely on it or really believe in its superiority...

[jthep]

Price Earnings Multiple though, even $27 is very undervalued. Yet I would agree it can go down more with it now being the target of options and short calls.

I would def want to buy RIM if it gets in the low $20's where I think it will bottom...

[dasdas1]

"Relationships." "Games." Their phones "define" them. What a pathetically stupid society.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

I think that's a false characterization. I use an iPhone and an iPad all the time. I never access Facebook and I very seldom if ever play games. Incidentally, I don't make or receive very many voice calls either. These devices are mainly used for information retrieval over the Internet. The examples are endless but here are a few:
->My doctor's appointment is at 8AM on the far side of the city. I access a realtime traffic map on my iPhone to choose the least congested route.
->I'm visiting the French Resistance Museum in Cahors, France. The photos of the Nazi occupation are amazing but the explanations are all in French. I use the Wikipanion app to look up English language Wikipedia descriptions of events that are displayed in the museum. My iPad with 3G is super for this purpose.
->I'm aboard a train on a route alongside the Rhine River in Germany. I see an interesting looking Castle a mile or so to the east. So I bring up Wikihood on my 3G enabled iPad. Wikihood uses the GPS function to find my current location and provides descriptions of nearby attractions. There is my castle along with photos and a detailed description.
->I'm still on that train in Germany when I receive an urgent email from my office in Houston advising that there is a file server problem. I use LogMeIn on my iPad 3G to remotely control the server. I can quickly see that the database server software has crashed. I reboot the server and the software remotely while being served lunch aboard the train.

[dasdas1]

I think you are overrating the iOS "eco-system". I still have iTunes on my PC, but converted all my files to the Amazon Cloud Player and will probably shop for music on Amazon from now on.

Why? I can access over 20 gigs of dl music on my 16gig Playbook using the Amazon Cloud Player. Not bad. iTunes is still the big dog in the game, but not the only game in town any more.

iPods are outdated as any smartphone worth a damn can be used as an MP3 player. Is it really that hard to convert all your itunes to the BB Desktop Manager and dl them to a BB?

iPhone is the same thing every year with new problems with one more over hyped illogical impractical feature that marketing will convince you, you cannot live without. Good media device, but not so great for typing or actual phone calls.

iPads have a huge upside and are the "it" thing right now. But once again, for me, its more practical and cost efficient to buy a Playbook and use my BB to share data through BB Bridge rather than spending an extra $300 a year for a separate data plan and another $300 for a more expensive 3G device.

Don't get me wrong, the iOS "eco-system'' is impressive, but only people that know nothing about computing rely on it or really believe in its superiority...

Geez, where to start. So ill informed.

First of all, iPods are not obsolete. Apple's iPod revenues are still very strong. The main reason is that the iPod touch has become the flagship of the iPod lineup. It is really an iPhone size WiFi enabled tablet that can run most of the apps the iPhone runs without the monthly AT&T contract. It's what all the kids want who can't talk their parents into a cell phone contract.

Apple is in the process of introducing iCloud. This is a much different service than cloud services from companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. iCloud stores your music, photos, apps, calendars, documents, and more. And wirelessly pushes them to all your devices � automatically. It�s the easiest way to manage your content. Because now you don�t have to. Buy a song on your computer and it instantly appears on your iPhone and iPad. Take a photo or video with your iPad and it automatically appears on your PC, iPhone and iPod Touch. You don't have to run a synchronization program or learn any procedures. It's completely automatic and totally transparent. iCloud is so much more than a hard drive in the sky. It�s the effortless way to access just about everything on all your devices. iCloud stores your content so it�s always accessible from your iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, or PC.* It gives you instant access to your music, apps, latest photos, and more. And it keeps your email, contacts, and calendars up to date across all your devices. No syncing required. No management required. In fact, no anything required. iCloud does it all for you. That's the iTunes ecosystem currently being implemented. Contrast the difficulty of achieving those same results if you have a mixed system, perhaps a Blackberry phone and Playbook, a Windows desktop PC, a Zune MP3 Player, and a Google Chromebook.

Iphones work great for making phone calls. Typing speed is a matter of acclimation. The more you use it, the faster you type. There are many helpers and typing shortcuts. Turn the iPhone sideways into landscape mode and the size of the keys doubles. Sure, an experienced Blackberry 2-thumb typist can go faster on his BB than he can on an iPhone on his first try. Giving him several months with the iPhone and then have a look. I realize that the myth that little tiny physical keyboards are superior to touchpads is central to the Blackberry users psych. It, however, is a false perception. I'd suggest you read this in depth comparison. iPhone 4 vs BlackBerry Bold: Which is the better work mobile? | Mobile | silicon.com

Regarding your Playbook tethering comment. Yes you can tether your Playbook to your BB but you have the hassle of establishing the connection every time you want to get on the Internet. You also have to worry about draining batteries in two devices and charging two devices. The iPad 3G version is available without any contract. You can opt for the light use (200MB per month) for $15/mo or the high usage 2GB per month for $25/mo. You can stop, start, downgrade, or upgrade at any time (it's just a setting in system preferences). So let's suppose you're going to be home for a month or two where WiFi is always available. You can turn off the 3G service and stop paying for it. Now suppose you're heading out of state on a business trip and need heavy use. You simply turn on the $25 per month service for the duration.

[Dapper37]

Hello everyone, my name is ....... ........... and I to have skin in the game!.... Very interesting posts, lots of good incite. One has to remember all of witch that has transpired over the last two years. Does anyone believe it was not critical for RIM to go throw the transition that they have almost completed. All that they have completed so far is hidden to us. Except for the PB, witch by most accounts is a month or two away from being completed, but is widely believed to be the most powerful OS on the market. Given the time to complete the transition RIM will again be rewarded with a strong stock price. I never believed that the stock was going this low, its the nature of the transition though, people sell out big time at the worst time. We can now understand where the company is going, the most new hand sets to ever hit the market by RIM, fully polished and ready for worldwide launch. PB 3 &4g, 10''PB by christmas and a new line of QNX supper phone in the FQ of calendar 2012. After that RIM's ability to keep pace is entrenched. Sell now, no way not me.

[Made in flanders]

I don't understand either why everybody keeps bashing on RIM.
This is just my very own opinion, and probably even Blackberry fans won't agree with me.
But FOR MY USES Blackberry isn't behind on the competitors. I constantly hear people scream that BBOS is old and Blackberry will only be good when QNX will come out. Do you people use the same OS as I do on the same phone?
I don't know with you guys, but OS6 is a really good OS for a phone. I don't see why the software off Blackberry is that far behind on the software that Apple or Android uses.
I don't even am waiting impatiently for QNX, because I love the OS that I currently have. Sure, there could be some fixes are extra functions, but I can't see anything that would drastically improve the phone.

And about apps, I have all the apps I need on my Blackberry, for playing games I use my PC!

[jthep]

...

Where is iCloud? 6 months away from officially being released? Sure there are beta versions, but Amazon already has had the Cloud Player for 2 months. In the future, it may be a great service, but right now, the Amazon Cloud Player is the best one out there and works fine with any Tablet.

iPods still sell bc Americans are caught up in marketing. I swear Apple could market the iVCR if they really wanted to and people would buy it in droves. Even cheaper smartphones can be used as MP3 players. I will agree kids still luv them, they like the different colors and stuff, but face it, in reality to a practical person, its redundant if you have any smartphone made in the last few years on any carrier.

I am never going to be convinced touch keyboards work better than QWERTY keyboards. Which I think is the Blackberry brand's bread and butter. Messaging, emails, texts, all are easier to compose on a real keyboard just speed thumbing on keys you can feel.

As for the Ipad, face it, no practical person is going to get the 200KB 3G plan, thing uses too much data and you will want to stream video and music with that kind of device. Realistically you are buying the $25 plan. With the Playbook, I share my BB Torch $25 plan and can browse the internet with real internet sites running flash, check my email, calendars. I cannot run my regular Playbook apps on Bridge though.

So the Playbook is just the more logical choice for me. No data plan, which save me $25x12 months= $300 per year. Also the 3G iPad's are $200-$300 more than the WiFi only iPads, so thats at least $500 I am saving right there. And another $300 every additional year I own a tablet. Its really not much of a contest if you own a BB phone, you buy a Playbook over iPad2...

I will admit, the iPad had the huge advantage in apps, but in reality the blocking of Hulu and Netflix are the only ones that matter. Since the Playbook can run the real sites if there is no app.

[dasdas1]

...

Where is iCloud? 6 months away from officially being released? Sure there are beta versions, but Amazon already has had the Cloud Player for 2 months. In the future, it may be a great service, but right now, the Amazon Cloud Player is the best one out there and works fine with any Tablet.

Parts of iCloud are working now and the full implementation in two or three months not six months.

Amazon Cloud Player is fine for music but it's just like a remote disk for other files. You must upload and download. iCloud is 100 percent automatic. All of your files and data are backed up and pushed to your other devices. You don't do a thing. Suppose you take a picture with your iPhone while you're on a trip to NYC. Click the shutter and the photo automatically goes up to the cloud and is pushed to your desktop PC at your home in Dallas, your iPad wherever it may be, and your iPod Touch. Your wife in Dallas can view the photo you just took seconds after you take it by simply visiting the pictures folder on your PC. It's there automatically. Same for all your other data such as bookmarks, calendar, contacts, emails, documents you create, etc.

[jthep]

Spare me the hypothetical practical uses of taking pictures and sending it to the iCloud. Don't most pictures get taken by smartphone and tagged to Facebook now with a Facebook app without ever going on a personal Hard Drive anywhere?

The example you used, a trip to NYC. You can take a whole lot of pix with any smartphone worth a damn and send it to Facebook if you have that app on your smartphone, so whats practical about the iCloud over others? Nothing really.

The other things you mention like calendar, bookmarks, contacts, sound like a list of things already done between Blackberries and Playbooks through the bridge app. Nothing revolutionary there.

[DannyAves]

There is one major reason why RIM will not only survive but thrive and that is Near Field Communication (NFC).

Payment systems are changing, and all the major players, including Amazon, Apple, Google, AT&T and T-Mobile are positioning themselves to move to NFC, perhaps to get a piece of the fees banks currently charge for processing payments of the $6.2 trillion spent annually.

I don�t think many people understand how big NFC might become, remember it is already very popular in some countries, especially Japan. It can be used as a payment system to purchase train or bus tickets, you could touch a NFC poster at a movie and get more information about the movie, or at a bus stop to get the schedule, students could touch an NFC contact and get all announcements and their calendar for the day, business people could just touch phones to exchange business cards etc. it can even be used as keys to open a door.

BlackBerry has some major advantages in NFC:
1. All new BlackBerry phones, as far as I can tell will have NFC, the same can�t be said for the others.
2. BlackBerry is secure, I don�t think Apple or Android can claim security, remember we are talking about NFC as a payment system, linked to your bank account.
3. BlackBerry has long battery life. Nobody will think of using NFC as a payment system to purchase that train ticket home at 2.00am if they think their phone will have a dead battery. Worse if it is an iPhone where you can�t change the battery.
4. BlackBerry gives a receipt that cannot be repudiated. The BBM tells you when something has been sent and received, and that is essential for any NFC payment system - although Apple is soon to introduce a similar system, which I strongly believe is also in support of their own NFC system.

There is a very strong push to increase the number of NFC payment outlets in London for the 2012 Olympics to an estimated 60,000 outlets since NFC is much faster and easier than cash or credit cards. This again, will be a big boost for the use of NFC.

I am sure RIM knows all this, so the fat lady, although she is rehearsing, I think it will be a long time before she sings.

[ADFXPro777]

There is a certain segment of corporate America that suffers from paranoia over security issues. In a few cases (eg: banks, stockbrokers, etc) those concerns are actually justified. I doubt that there has been any corporate espionage enabled by iPhones that would have been prevented by Blackberries.

You should step out to the real world my friend

Surely you jest! I mean, c'mon. Stop it with the nonsense please. With the iPad you get the iTunes ecosystem with about half a million apps including some seriously great apps like Pages, Numbers, WS Scanner, Wolfram Alpha, StreamToMe, Keynote, Netflix, SketchbookX, LogMeIn (remote control PC and Mac), Photoshop Express, etc. You get the 10 inch screen (costs a whole lot more than a 7 inch screen). You get 3G connectivity, eMail, a full ten hour battery life, and the rest of the stuff that Playbook left out.

The Playbook might be a newer tablet and have less apps, but it is far more powerful, capable and up-gradable than any ipad. More importantly, it is powered by QNX, a military-grade technology that can be found in some of the most demanding environments such as nuclear power plants, tanks, fighter planes, etc (putting Apple technology in areas like these would be a joke). It has a huge amount of developing potential that really proves how "toy-like" Apple products typically are.

[ugahairydawgs]

You should step out to the real world my friend



The Playbook might be a newer tablet and have less apps, but it is far more powerful, capable and up-gradable than any ipad. More importantly, it is powered by QNX, a military-grade technology that can be found in some of the most demanding environments such as nuclear power plants, tanks, fighter planes, etc (putting Apple technology in areas like these would be a joke). It has a huge amount of developing potential that really proves how "toy-like" Apple products typically are.

Why exactly do our consumer devices need to be running the same software that powers tanks and nuclear power plants?

Of course a tablet is a toy. I'm not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the way we bought into the fact that we have to somehow incorporate serious work into every aspect of our lives. It's ok to have fun and to have a device hat helps out with that. Most folks don't need to have a mobile workhorse 24/7.

[ADFXPro777]

Why exactly do our consumer devices need to be running the same software that powers tanks and nuclear power plants?

Of course a tablet is a toy. I'm not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the way we bought into the fact that we have to somehow incorporate serious work into every aspect of our lives. It's ok to have fun and to have a device hat helps out with that. Most folks don't need to have a mobile workhorse 24/7.

Apple and Android are consumer-oriented products. RIM's, on the other hand, is suited to the enterprise/business/government users. Two different markets usually equal two different needs.

You can label tablets as toys if you want. But if you want the very best "toy" out there, RIM's QNX-powered Playbook is the new, undisputed standard of tablets - why not just get the best if that's the case?

[belfastdispatcher]

Parts of iCloud are working now and the full implementation in two or three months not six months.

Amazon Cloud Player is fine for music but it's just like a remote disk for other files. You must upload and download. iCloud is 100 percent automatic. All of your files and data are backed up and pushed to your other devices. You don't do a thing. Suppose you take a picture with your iPhone while you're on a trip to NYC. Click the shutter and the photo automatically goes up to the cloud and is pushed to your desktop PC at your home in Dallas, your iPad wherever it may be, and your iPod Touch. Your wife in Dallas can view the photo you just took seconds after you take it by simply visiting the pictures folder on your PC. It's there automatically. Same for all your other data such as bookmarks, calendar, contacts, emails, documents you create, etc.

Even when the icloud will launch it will be USA only for a while. Right now icloud doesn't exist for consumers. It's no alternative to Dropbox yet, when it will be available everywhere then yes, untill then no.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com