[djphotography]

BBM outage a couple weeks ago, now RIMs network is down today. Playbook reception was lukewarm at best. RIM cuts jobs and then soon after their stock drops 23% after almost 60% fall in sales in 2nd quarter. Is this the beginning of the end?

I have been unimpressed with RIMs recent QC. I have had my phone replaced 4 times since I bought it in February (9780) and my wife has had her phone replaced twice (9330).

Its a little sad, I love my blackberry but I am really starting to regret not going with "the other guy". I am going to really regret it if RIM goes belly up and renders the BB all but useless.

[kill_9]

Research In Motion is spiraling downward and the evidence is becoming more obvious with each passing day. Sadly, management is floundering and acts of desperation abound. Nero fiddles whilst RIM, I mean Rome, burns.

[kbz1960]

Yes they have been on a downward spiral and they are in transition and working to go back up. I guess the only thing that will tell if they can is time.

As for your phones becoming useless I don't know if that is all dependent on BES/BIS.

[djphotography]

It appears internet is working again. My BBM is still not sending though. I wonder what the carriers response will be, if anything, if BB eventually tanks since data runs through their servers. I highly doubt they are willing to take the financial hit for RIMs downfall. I would at least hope they don't force people to pay hardware upgrade fees to get a usable device.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[djphotography]

I was under the impression data was routed through the RIM servers? Without RIMs servers can BBs still be used? If so why does my data fail everytime RIMs servers go down? I realize the phone would still work but without the data and BBM the phone loses some of its appeal.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[kill_9]

It appears internet is working again. My BBM is still not sending though.

I think there was scheduled maintenance during the early hours of today which might explain some of the connectivity and service issues people have been experiencing today. All I know for sure, because my inbox never received notification, is there is never an official publicly-released bulletin about upcoming maintenance windows. However, carrier updates can also impact our smartphones as evidenced by Rogers Wireless when a software upgrade (?) took out their entire wireless system in the Maritime Provinces (NB, NS, and PE). Rogers claimed an unknown technical issue was responsible at the time.

[cprunax]

Are you sure that a couple weeks ago it was RIM's fault, I know a few cases when the operators blamed RIM fot their incompetence.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[kill_9]

I was under the impression data was routed through the RIM servers? Without RIMs servers can BBs still be used? If so why does my data fail everytime RIMs servers go down? I realize the phone would still work but without the data and BBM the phone loses some of its appeal.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

All data traffic is routed through the infrastructure operated by RIM with the possible exception of WAP browser traffic that traverses solely over the wireless carrier's network. So, if RIM went bankrupt the most valuable part of your BIS data plan becomes inoperable. Those using BES would also loose secure message transfer between the smartphones and corporate/government email servers. Hey it would be like 1999 all over again.

[djphotography]

Yes, RIM publicly acknowledged a BBM outage in Canada and Latin America on Sept 15/16.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[chrism_scotland]

The thing I don't really understand about the worrying about RIM is that financially they are very strong, market share has been falling in North America but in Europe (especially the UK) Blackberry smartphones are much more common among consumers than they once were, when I first looked at getting a BB (Bold 9000) hardly anyone other than business folk had one but now I tend to see people with either Blackberries or iPhones.

Its true they've struggled in recent years with outdated phones and the poor Playbook sales but financially RIM is still making money; albeit not as much and has no debt.
Sales of the new OS7 devices seem to have been really good and they've certainly been very well received, I don't think we need to worry about about a RIM bankruptcy, the issue isn't finances or money but the vision and products, it is going to be a transitional 24 months for RIM as they introduce the QNX Smartphones and either improve and support the Playbook or ditch it but I believe things are looking up at RIM.

If by the end of 2012 things aren't better then I can see a takeover or merger but I certainly can't see bankruptcy.

[kbz1960]

The thing I don't really understand about the worrying about RIM is that financially they are very strong, market share has been falling in North America but in Europe (especially the UK) Blackberry smartphones are much more common among consumers than they once were, when I first looked at getting a BB (Bold 9000) hardly anyone other than business folk had one but now I tend to see people with either Blackberries or iPhones.

Its true they've struggled in recent years with outdated phones and the poor Playbook sales but financially RIM is still making money; albeit not as much and has no debt.
Sales of the new OS7 devices seem to have been really good and they've certainly been very well received, I don't think we need to worry about about a RIM bankruptcy, the issue isn't finances or money but the vision and products, it is going to be a transitional 24 months for RIM as they introduce the QNX Smartphones and either improve and support the Playbook or ditch it but I believe things are looking up at RIM.

If by the end of 2012 things aren't better then I can see a takeover or merger but I certainly can't see bankruptcy.

It's because the ones who control the stock market with their manipulations say they are.

[Economist101]

I don't know if you can honestly claim they're on a downward spiral. I would agree that they're certainly not on an upward swing yet.

[BoldtotheMax]

I don't even think BB7 phones are even selling that well. People that have them might think they are to justify their purchase as it stands, majority of carriers wont push BB's and your average Joe consumer wont notice it much in the mass sea of Android phones and the have the two carriers that sell a ton of iPhones. Least over here in North America.

Now if RIM could get off their asses and hire a good marketing team to push these, then RIM might not be where they are today in the market.

I love my BB's, but there are others out there that do it better in other more important factors to me. Hopeful for QNX doing well and saving RIM, as if that don't sell well, then IMO it will be the proverbial nail in the coffin.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[rdkempt]

Do not fear, they will soon put their failed Playbook OS on their phones to fix the day!

[Xerxes10]

I really want RIM to pull off a turn-around and stop their current nosedive in the US market. Have you noticed that mobile articles analyizing the market often don't even mention RIM? It's all IOS vs. Android, with the very real possibility the WP7 "Mango" powered phones may really take off once new handsets from Nokia, Samsung, & HTC on the way.

Also, while I love QNX as an OS on my PlayBool (fast, stable, multitasking, simple, etc) I truly don't see how just getting it onto a phone is going to magically help RIM. Sounds like they're struggling just to ensure it works with BES/BIS (which is why we still don't have native email on PlayBook) and where are any apps going to come from? Since 3rd party developers are focusing on iOS, Android, and even WP7 it seems RIM's only hope is to either hire developers or pay them in advance to make at least a minimum of apps people want. One example: SPOKEN TURN BY TURN NAVIGATION. Why hasn't RIM done this of OS6 & OS7 users? Every Android customer has it, and the rumor (or maybe it's fact already) is that iOS and Windows customers get it too. But RIM wants us to pay TeleNav or Garmin some ridiculous amount for something every other phone gets for free? I can't understand why RIM rolls over for the carriers (like letting AT&T block Bridge). If RIM won't stand up for me as a consumer then I'm going to stop by loyalty to them and jump to a Windows phone. We'll see.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[waccotobacco]

RIM blew through half their cash last quarter. Losing money on each playbook. Only upside is that there still remain a lot of fans who buy their items no matter what. QNX reception on their phones is key.

[mithrazor]

BBM outage a couple weeks ago, now RIMs network is down today. Playbook reception was lukewarm at best. RIM cuts jobs and then soon after their stock drops 23% after almost 60% fall in sales in 2nd quarter. Is this the beginning of the end?

Yeah but the Bold 9900/9930 got the great reviews and are considered the greatest Blackberries to date. Yes there are more negatives than good this year. But many companies have had bad years/decades.

Hopefully this is the wake up call for RIM we're seeing it to be. All we can do now is wait and see what they have in store. Half a month ain't too bad.

And I don't think they're losing money on each Playbook. They're just not making anything off of it.

[o4liberty]

Unless RIM does something stupid they will be around for some time. I firmly believe that windows mobile will be the next player to drop out of the game IMO. Android will be #1 very shortly with Apple trailing in the #2 spot leaving RIM 3rd!

Sent from my BlackBerry 9930 using Tapatalk

[katiepea]

Unless RIM does something stupid they will be around for some time. I firmly believe that windows mobile will be the next player to drop out of the game IMO. Android will be #1 very shortly with Apple trailing in the #2 spot leaving RIM 3rd!

Sent from my BlackBerry 9930 using Tapatalk

Windows mobile has been dead for a long time my friend, Microsoft now produces windows phone, which is expected to beat ios and rim in marketshare in 1-2 years. Its getting phenomenal reviews and is a fantastic OS. Its widley believed windows phones will be the next big thing.

Bloomburg quote:
According to research reports from Gartner and IDC, Microsoft�s Windows Phone operating system will grab about 20% of the smartphone market by 2015, enough to propel the OS past Apple�s iOS platform to take the No. 2 spot globally. Research firm Gartner believes Android will have a 49% market share in 2015, followed by Windows Phone at 19.5%, and Apple�s iOS growth will slow so much that it will only maintain a 17% share. IDC believes Windows Phone will have a 20.3 percent share in 2015.

Android had been #1 for a LONG time with twice the global marketshare as iphone. iOS has been number 2 with rim 3rd for a while... Where have you been?

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[kbz1960]

Could the outages be due to updates for QNX?

[kevinnugent]

Unless RIM does something stupid they will be around for some time. I firmly believe that windows mobile will be the next player to drop out of the game IMO. Android will be #1 very shortly with Apple trailing in the #2 spot leaving RIM 3rd!

Sent from my BlackBerry 9930 using Tapatalk

Unless RIM do something stupid? Man, that's cheered me up no end!

[rjshahan]

RIM blew through half their cash last quarter. Losing money on each playbook. Only upside is that there still remain a lot of fans who buy their items no matter what. QNX reception on their phones is key.

RIM's drop in cash in Q2 was largely due to the $700 million spent to purchase a stake in the Nortel patents. Additionally they spent cash building up inventory to fill the channel with OS7 devices, a global rollout of seven devices in a couple of months requires quite a few devices to be built and shipped globally. This was explained quite clearly on the earnings call in September. It is not an unusual move by any company to see cash reserves drop and inventory rise before a major product launch.

The PlayBook's volumes and cost make it a fairly insignificant device on RIM's balance sheet from a strict numbers perspective. RIM supposedly built 1.5 million over 2 quarters, 700k shipped and 800k in inventory. They sold about 25 million devices over the same two quarters. If RIM has sold every PlayBook they had planned for it would have only accounted for 6% of sales. Add to that the PlayBook is low margin and has no service revenue and its a device that generates minimal income for the quantity. RIM's PlayBook experiment doesn't jeopardize the company's balance sheet in any significant way.

[katiepea]

RIM's drop in cash in Q2 was largely due to the $700 million spent to purchase a stake in the Nortel patents. Additionally they spent cash building up inventory to fill the channel with OS7 devices, a global rollout of seven devices in a couple of months requires quite a few devices to be built and shipped globally. This was explained quite clearly on the earnings call in September. It is not an unusual move by any company to see cash reserves drop and inventory rise before a major product launch.

The PlayBook's volumes and cost make it a fairly insignificant device on RIM's balance sheet from a strict numbers perspective. RIM supposedly built 1.5 million over 2 quarters, 700k shipped and 800k in inventory. They sold about 25 million devices over the same two quarters. If RIM has sold every PlayBook they had planned for it would have only accounted for 6% of sales. Add to that the PlayBook is low margin and has no service revenue and its a device that generates minimal income for the quantity. RIM's PlayBook experiment doesn't jeopardize the company's balance sheet in any significant way.

true, but it's also worth noting that some people who analyze RIM's intellectual assets, including what they acquired with nortel, don't think they're really worth anything so you have to wonder if it was extremely misguided of RIM to have spent $700 million on patents when your company worth has dropped 60% in 12 months and what you've gotten from it is close to nothing.

from the wall street journal:
We’ve all been hashing out options for sad Research in Motion, which touched a years-long stock low today and now is valued at $11.5 billion — down from more than $80 billion three years ago.

One Plan B option investors mention for the Blackberry maker is selling its trove of patents. The strategy on paper seems newly viable, thanks to a dead company (Nortel) selling its mobile patent assets for $4.5 billion.

But today Jefferies squashes those hopes for RIM bulls. The equity-research shop says it analyzed RIM’s 1,400 patents and figures they’re likely only worth $1 billion. Uh oh. Here is Jefferies’ take:

“In valuing the patents we assume RIM sells its patent portfolio but arranges cross-licensing agreement with other wireless patent holders. The main value would be in licensing the patents to the other third of new and upcoming wireless entrants and in licensing the security patents where RIM is particularly strong and less cross licensing is required. Therefore, we estimate RIM’s patents in a take-out could be worth ~$2.5B but likely only ~$1B if RIM still sells handsets.”

now to to shake a stick at 1 billion dollars, but in the grande scheme of things, if RIM had to rely on patent investment, it's not really a card to play in a sale. really makes me wonder what happens if qnx handsets don't explode immediately. it's way to early to really imagine what the next 6 months uncover. but i can easily see the stock going into the teens. it's currently at 20.39. and with rumors of Icahn swirling around, i dunno. the scenario seems ideal for a splitting of assets such as what happened with other companies he's been involved with. as far as what he's done in the past, well, RIM is ideally poised for him going by his history. what is the future of the playbook? OS2 isn't going to make the device sell better, you've got amazon releasing a tablet with more features at full price of $250 and a discounted playbook with a bad name already at a comparable ( i think exactly the same from some retailers) price as the kindle fire, which will get good reviews and without a doubt have high sales. that thing is likely to sell as many copies in it's first day as the playbook has altogether. this is only going to make the playbook seem less desirable.

if you go outside of this forum, and just pick any blog, engadget, gizmodo, bgr, tech crunch, read the comments about tablets. it's close to 100% of people saying they wouldn't buy a playbook unless it was $100 but they're likely to purchase or at least consider the kindle fire. at this point i'm left wondering not only about the future of the playbook, but the company as a whole. their investments seem to yield no return so far. i realize it's still early in their game, but RIM seems to have a detrimental failure in keeping up. by the time a qnx handset is finally out i can see RIM with the attitude of OK HERE *out of breath* hoping it holds people over, when in reality it's going to be the first step in a long struggle to get people to adopt it. forget about android and iOS those are already proven full steam ahead platforms. microsoft is not playing around. exchange is fantastic, and they have a HUUUGE head start on qnx. their native sdk for wp7 has been out for a year, RIM just released theirs yesterday. they have something like 50,000 apps in the windows marketplace. i just wonder with developers already in love with android, iOS, and adopting to develop for wp7 at an impressive rate (a lot of big name developers have announced they'll be making apps for WP7 before android or iOS) if RIM has invested enough effort here.

[o4liberty]

RIM knows they are in trouble and they have the resources to make the needed changes. I think Devcon will bring some insight on what we will see in Q1 and hopefully there is a clear picture of what BB OS and QNX will be moving forward.

Sent from my BlackBerry 9930 using Tapatalk

[Bearcatrp]

Rim is spread out kind of thin these days. 2 OS's to work on, phones and tablets. Just came back a week ago to find OS7 is pretty impressive. If rim wants to dabble in the tablet market, they need a bigger one. I played with the 7 inch. Way to small for me. Should go at least 9 inches and develope QNX on it. Rim needs to focus more on OS7 and getting applications to market. Folks are tired of upgrading phones every year. The balls in rim's court. They can make a come back by focusing on core business or die a slow death being spreading to thin with their hands in to many projects. I came back for one reason. A great communication device, phone and messaging! Leave the gaming to the tablet. Just hope they figure this out rather quickly.