RIM Investors Unite! Thoughts

Just wondering how many of you own shares in RIM/RIMM. Empirical research to back up your thoughts would be great!

I am curious to hear your thoughts about the company, about (in no particular order):

1) Hardware issues that seem to be appearing out of nowhere, with people sending back their 9700 multiple times. It could just be an issue relating to a certain small portion of users who may have OCD, but RIM significantly cut costs last quarter, and if quality suffers significantly because of that, obviously it's a short term fix.

Not sure what people are saying about the Storm 2's quality control.

2) RIM's slow ability to react to consumer's demands. Jim Balsillie has said that his vision is that RIM's products will revolve around the consumer, but considering the boring OS, lack of games/apps, and terrible stock browser, there seems to be a disconnect between the vision and actual execution. I am wondering if the their 2010 plans to address these issues are a sign of the reactionary corporate culture.

3) Do you think that even if RIM loses its spotlight as "the" smartphone company, that its stock may do well anyway? Considering that the smartphone market is still a rapidly growing phenomenon, do you think RIM's stock will do well anyway? I can't remember the exact numbers now, but I believe the smartphone market is about 35% of the entire phone market, and I don't think it's out of the question that the number will react at least 50% within a couple years as more people's contracts end.

It's I think about 15x next year's earnings, and RIM would really have to screw up their phones to not achieve at least that earnings growth rate.

4) What are some positive and negative things to look out for? More specifically empirical evidence from their financial statements.

For example, I noticed RIM changed the way its taxes are calculated, and compared to previous year's numbers, the tax rate they are paying is something like 10% less. I haven't been able to find out whether this is an accounting thing (bad), or whether they are actually paying less taxes (good).

They have also more than doubled their Research & Development expenses in the last year and a half, and honestly I don't think they have enough to show for it.




Let me know your thoughts, and anything else you can think of!

As of today I own some RIMM stock.

I have only had my blackberry for a few weeks, but I'm very impressed with it and what I have been reading about Research in motion.

About a year ago I started investing in the stock market for the first time in my life.

After a lot of research I decided to start investing in a local utility company, OTTR.

Looking back over the last year it has been a good move. There have been no big jumps in the OTTR stock, but with the dividends and getting lucky some months at buying on the low end I would profit about 10% on my investment if I sold today.

I have been looking for another company to invest in for the last couple months. A few days after buying my first blackberry I started doing some research on the company that owns blackberry.

Today I own stock in the company and plan on investing weekly through sharebuilder.