[BBuser13]

Hey everyone,

I've been reading around these forums for quite a while. I had the opportunity of selecting RIMM for my strategy & policy class and basically I have to outline industry potential, threats, etc and recommend a policy. I was wondering if anyone here had any possible appendices or useful info that I could throw in for it. My group told me to focus more on the future (I opted for this bc I could BS a lot with the new Bold and the kickstart flip?) while others focus on industry threats, CSR's, potential, key financials, etc. Anyway, I read these forums, engadget, macrumors and have a general idea of the future plans of this company, I was just wondering if anyone has any good sourced graphs/appendices, or general info that could help me out. Thanks a lot in advance.

[Duvi]

Welcome 2 CB.com, hopefully someone can chime in with some info.

[cutdacheck2003]

Hey everyone,

I've been reading around these forums for quite a while. I had the opportunity of selecting RIMM for my strategy & policy class and basically I have to outline industry potential, threats, etc and recommend a policy. I was wondering if anyone here had any possible appendices or useful info that I could throw in for it. My group told me to focus more on the future (I opted for this bc I could BS a lot with the new Bold and the kickstart flip?) while others focus on industry threats, CSR's, potential, key financials, etc. Anyway, I read these forums, engadget, macrumors and have a general idea of the future plans of this company, I was just wondering if anyone has any good sourced graphs/appendices, or general info that could help me out. Thanks a lot in advance.

Im not doing your paper for you, but Welcome to CB. Im pretty sure someone can help. LOL

[LBE7]

The best info you're going to get is probably going to come off RIM's annual and quarterly financial reports. You could search for those or just look them up on their site under investor relations. It should be easy to grab some good quotes and charts of previous operational performance. It's common for those reports to include the management's summary of performance, descriptions of risks to performance, and guidance for future performance.

But, if you're not used to going through financial reports, they can be pretty overwhelming. If you want some quick graphs and key financial figures, you can just look the company up on most any financial website. I recommend just using Yahoo finance. From there, you can grab the key financials, a picture of stock price performance versus closest competitors and the market at large, read about industry summary and analysis, get plenty of links to news articles et cetera.

If you are trying to find forward-looking projections and that sort of thing, try to look for some analyst reports. Those will have exactly what you're looking for. Some of these might be free, but the best tend to cost a lot. If you have access through your school to business databases, that might be the best way to get that stuff for free. Otherwise, look on financial news sites for analysts' earnings estimates consensus for the next year.

I hope that helps. Good luck.

[Reed McLay]

If you are looking for a real leg up, read what Mike Lazaridis thinks about the future.

CBC News In Depth: Tech

BlackBerry only the beginning

All phones in the future will be smartphones, according to Research In Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis.

Just how did a small technology start-up from Waterloo, Ont., surpass the Royal Bank to become Canada's most valuable company? Research in Motion's astounding global success came on the back of one simple product, the BlackBerry, which showed that cellphones could do much more by taking e-mail off the computer and making it mobile.

Founder and co-chief executive officer Mike Lazaridis discussed with CBCNews.ca. how the BlackBerry sparked a revolution in mobility and how current devices are only the tip of the iceberg.

What's your current mobile device and what's your favourite feature on it? I suspect it's a BlackBerry?
You know, you're right — it is a BlackBerry and you know what my favourite feature is? The instantaneous push e-mail. Go figure!

Which model are you using?
I'm currently using an 8320. I get to use it all, but the real problem is no one gives the really new stuff because they're afraid I'm going to show it to somebody. So I at least get the latest released products.

...
The bottom line is less and less of the business is happening in your office. By staying connected and having that secure, always-on, instantaneous connection to all that information frees us to conduct business the way it should be done, more face to face and outside the office, rather than being chained to the office. That was something that was really important.

There's one other thing that's not talked about enough. RIM was the first company to deploy BlackBerry to every employee. We did that in the early days because we wanted an environment to debug the product, we wanted to find all the problems with the product before we shipped it.

We went to great lengths to make sure we had the processes and software in the product so that we could extract that information. More importantly, what we realized was the BlackBerry was allowing all of our employees to stay in touch, so we were able to disseminate information to everyone instantaneously.

They were able to be much more collaborative and we were starting to get a more inclusive environment where more and more teams were talking about issues and involved in decisions.

There was an accurate sense of information flowing through the organization. And of course everything was documented, and we were getting to this point where we were realizing that this was something that was giving us a competitive advantage.

When you look at the success RIM and the BlackBerry have had, you really do have to wonder how much of a role BlackBerry itself being rolled out to every employee had in that success.

...