[1magine]

Good point about RIM making money from carriers. I believe its less in other parts of the world, but still money ntl. Also these are not nwly manufactured devices, they are warehoused devices not for sale in the EU, US or Canada. Old/new stock.

Also - A Droid Incredible, or G2 (both at least 1-2 gens back) are still out of the price range for many in the developing world. Bold 9000's, Tours, older curves and older RIM devices are often easily attainable. In many cases the batteries are more expensive and harder to come by than the devices. Just had a photographer friend come back from Costa Rico talking about just that.

Revenue is revenue right now. So its good that RIM has it to keep things at bay. But, one should not think that this is a long term fix. The US and EU markets are what counts. No one is developing applications for these areas of the world. And the profit margin is not sufficient to sustain growth and development for a phone manufacturer.

[lnichols]

I'm sure that sales in the US will pick up when the OS7 phones come out. There simply hasn't been anything to really buy here from RIM that isn't outdated. I could have upgraded my Tour last year, but to what, the Bold 9650?!?! No thanks. Not a bad phone but not different enough to burn an upgrade on. Would have got a Torch if not for that being an AT&T exclusive. The OS7 phones are using good, current chipsets and internals. QNX phones is where they need to get to though. Thankfully they have this International growth to provide some buffer financially to get QNX phones to market.

[belfastdispatcher]

Good point about RIM making money from carriers. I believe its less in other parts of the world, but still money ntl. Also these are not nwly manufactured devices, they are warehoused devices not for sale in the EU, US or Canada. Old/new stock.

Also - A Droid Incredible, or G2 (both at least 1-2 gens back) are still out of the price range for many in the developing world. Bold 9000's, Tours, older curves and older RIM devices are often easily attainable. In many cases the batteries are more expensive and harder to come by than the devices. Just had a photographer friend come back from Costa Rico talking about just that.

Revenue is revenue right now. So its good that RIM has it to keep things at bay. But, one should not think that this is a long term fix. The US and EU markets are what counts. No one is developing applications for these areas of the world. And the profit margin is not sufficient to sustain growth and development for a phone manufacturer.

And you know all this how? Are you some kind of an expert?

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[katiepea]

And you know all this how? Are you some kind of an expert?

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

you don't have to be an expert to state what he stated, that's pretty widely acknowledged fact.

[_StephenBB81]

Well you have to remember that each new subscriber the carrier has to pay RIM a monthly fee, think its $5. So 1 million new subscribers equals $5 million per month in new revenue, or $60 million per year. RIM is making money even selling the old junk. And I would venture that the cost from RIM to make those older devices is probably extremely cheap so they are making money on the phones too.

Ok This is a misconception I always don't have the time to comment on BUT really feel the need to.

Building Older devices does NOT necessarily mean they are cheaper to make. There are many factors in purchasing and manufacturing,
There is a point of diminishing returns, and then where is actually costs MORE to make "cheaper" stuff due to production runs.
The FAB's that make the SoC's need to retool to make the newer products, as a product reaches it's end of life for manufacturing 2 things happen. they get heavily discounted to clear inventory as inventory becomes manageable pricing goes UP and UP to encourage purchasing of NEW inventory AND to capture margins from those that NEED the older technology and reduce the need to change the lines for production.

RIM's technology is old enough I very much think they are in the point of costing near the same to build a 6XXmhz device as it costs to build a 1.2Ghz chip due to manufacturing volumes,

same with RAM chips and such but to a much lesser degree, if you recall back in the day's with the transition from SD RAM to DDR RAM, there was a point that 128 MB SD RAM chips cost more than 256 MB DDR RAM chips because of production volumes

[i7guy]

you don't have to be an expert to state what he stated, that's pretty widely acknowledged fact.

It's actually a widely acknowledged factoid.

[lnichols]

Building Older devices does NOT necessarily mean they are cheaper to make.

I totally agree and being in tech I see things that get more expensive when they are not available in quantity and age. I did not say that anything that is older design and components is cheaper to make, but I doubt that RIM's costs for the existing phones has gone up due to parts shortages. I mean they were going to release more refreshes before they came to their extremely late epiphany that they needed new processors. Marvell would probably churn out those POS processors as long as RIM would buy them, but thankfully they are going to the Qualcomm SoC's now (which they should have done long ago to consolidate the CDMA and GSM lines to a single architecture). I would love to see RIM's cost for each device to put the ASP thing in proper perspective.

[cbreze]

I think there IS some interest in the coming models, BUT most of us are tired of waiting.

Yeah, that's me tired of waiting and waning interest. I dug the heck outta my bold, but geez, ya gotta change it up every year or so. While waiting for the 9930 I tried another platform utilizing my NE2. Not sure I'll be back for the 9930 now or not. I wonder how many others are doing this?

[dandbj13]

Will someone please explain why iPhones sales are strong, if not increasing, yet there has been no new iPhone in over a year. If that is not affecting iPhone sales, why would it be affecting BB sales?

[belfastdispatcher]

Will someone please explain why iPhones sales are strong, if not increasing, yet there has been no new iPhone in over a year. If that is not affecting iPhone sales, why would it be affecting BB sales?

You forgot about the cdma iphone 4, that boosted sales quite a bit.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[ADGrant]

Will someone please explain why iPhones sales are strong, if not increasing, yet there has been no new iPhone in over a year. If that is not affecting iPhone sales, why would it be affecting BB sales?

There hasn't really been a new BB in RIM's most popular form factor in almost two years. The 9650 and 9780 are minor upgrades.

I doubt the Perl, Style or Torch are that popular.

[DenverRalphy]

Will someone please explain why iPhones sales are strong, if not increasing, yet there has been no new iPhone in over a year. If that is not affecting iPhone sales, why would it be affecting BB sales?

It's just over a year (June 24th), but Apple does have an advantage in that they can stick to an annual release cycle simply because they pack it with bleeding edge hardware that isn't perceived as obsolete a year after release. The current release cycle will be 4 months longer than usual (as I believe the next phone is slated for October), but the iPhone4 is still a pretty decent device spec-wise. And too, Apple is actually pretty good at supporting older devices.

The problem with BB sales is that each BB user prefers a specific model. So while you might see new releases each quarter, the model a person has chosen to adopt would normally still see an annual release cycle. Unfortunately, when only one model has been released in the last year, there are people sitting on their preferred model that haven't seen an upgrade in quite some time (2+ years).

[_StephenBB81]

Will someone please explain why iPhones sales are strong, if not increasing, yet there has been no new iPhone in over a year. If that is not affecting iPhone sales, why would it be affecting BB sales?

Well Technically there was a New iPhone released recently by Verizon, giving a new Sales jump

if you look at iPhone sales they peak in the launch quarter and continue to fall each quater till the next iPhone unless a new carrier picks it up

RIM still managed to sell 13 million devices in the last quarter having really nothing but a keyboard and BBM going for them in the public's eye,

NO good marketing, NO good sales staff, No dedicated locations, Apple has all of those

[TheMimic]

Apparently they just tweeted having added 1 million subscribers in less than 3 weeks in Europe, UAE and South Africa.

What with negative press about its prospects, some scary new rival handsets and the odd bad vibe about its new Playbook you might have thought times were tough for BlackBerry maker Research In Motion.

Apparently not as they have just tweeted that the company has added more than one million subscribers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa in less than three weeks.

Here's the tweet

"Pow! BlackBerry continues momentum across EMEA with 1 million + new subscribers added in less than 3 weeks" @BlackBerry

Interesting stuff.

[_StephenBB81]

Apparently they just tweeted having added 1 million subscribers in less than 3 weeks in Europe, UAE and South Africa.

They didn't "Just tweet"

http://crackberry.com/rim-adds-over-...a-less-3-weeks

Crackberry covered the Tweet almost exactly 24h ago

[1magine]

Why I-phone sales are steady v. BB, especially in American and EU markets?

I think RMJones hit on all of it. First - their year old devices are spec wise head and shoulders over RIM's latest offerings. Second if you want an I-phone, you want an I-phone. If you want a BB - you may want a Curve, a Bold, a Torch or a Touchscreen. If you want a touch screen BB you have been waiting a loong time for a decent one. And legacy supporet on Apple is pretty damn good. Think about it, the I-phone 3G got the 3Gs and 4G OS updates. The Storm2 and many others weren't updated to OS6. No OS6 device will get OS7. No OS7 device will get QNX. This bugs app developers and consumers who are increasingly paying more attention, not to mention being bombarded by sales people who throw specs and ideas at them that they may not understand but are influenced by. Like saying, Apple has shown that they will give consistant software upgrades for their devices for up to 3 years, if you buy a Blackberry, you may not get any more updates after a few months. When signing a 2 or 3 year contract, and spending $200+ for a device, that means something.

[dandbj13]

Well Technically there was a New iPhone released recently by Verizon, giving a new Sales jump

if you look at iPhone sales they peak in the launch quarter and continue to fall each quater till the next iPhone unless a new carrier picks it up

RIM still managed to sell 13 million devices in the last quarter having really nothing but a keyboard and BBM going for them in the public's eye,

NO good marketing, NO good sales staff, No dedicated locations, Apple has all of those

Sure, but none of that really explains it, unless I am misunderstanding the story. It doesn't matter that the iPhone went to a new carrier. It was still the same phone without a single improvement. More to the point, AT&T should have lost subscribers as a result. That didn't happen. AT&T gained more new iPhone customers than did Verizon. Apple sales may taper off over the course of the year, but Apple has never lost subs to my knowledge. RIM is actually losing customers, not just minimizing gains. That is a huge difference. Correct me if I'm wrong.

If I'm not wrong, then the lack of a new phone from RIM shouldn't make any difference. Happy BB users would just wait for the next opportunity to buy another BB, just like iPhone users are doing now. Customers do not just get up and walk away if they are happy with the product.

[_StephenBB81]

Sure, but none of that really explains it, unless I am misunderstanding the story. It doesn't matter that the iPhone went to a new carrier. It was still the same phone without a single improvement. More to the point, AT&T should have lost subscribers as a result. That didn't happen. AT&T gained more new iPhone customers than did Verizon. Apple sales may taper off over the course of the year, but Apple has never lost subs to my knowledge. RIM is actually losing customers, not just minimizing gains. That is a huge difference. Correct me if I'm wrong.

If I'm not wrong, then the lack of a new phone from RIM shouldn't make any difference. Happy BB users would just wait for the next opportunity to buy another BB, just like iPhone users are doing now. Customers do not just get up and walk away if they are happy with the product.

The Lack of sales people play a LARGE Roll, people don't like to admit it but sales people really drive sales and Apple understands this well their Apple stores are always well staffed, they market well and that attracts NEW customer's RIM doesn't do anything to attract new customers, that is their flaw,

Apples device's retain support, have the apps that the media pump, and if you already have Apple products you are somewhat fine with the Apple way.

THAT is what keeps selling iPhones, and will continue to do so well into iPhone 6, Android will never have have Apple sales people, RIM COULD get to the point of having sales people if they would dedicate them selves to the consumer market.

AND RIM needs to get device support like Apple does, Apple doesn't admit fault, but they do offer you the latest OS for your device and their legacy support is only 4 years back so hardware wise for an app launching OS they can keep offering support.

Apple is surely losing customers, but they gain them faster than they lose them, RIM in North America has now lost more than they gained last quarter, but go look at inventory levels and displays at the store level and try and find a reason someone with no phone knowledge would pick up a Blackberry?

you wont find one.

[Jake Storm]

Marketing.
Apple is great at marketing the **** out of the iPhone...
RIM? Not so much.

[dandbj13]

OK folks, this is an interesting discussion, but one that I have seen on every non-Apple fansite. People are trying to figure out why the iPhone sells in the same circumstances where their product of choice does not. Eventually, it always comes down to Apple's marketing.

I don't buy this for a moment. Admittedly, I do not watch much TV. But what I do watch is not dominated by Apple commercials. I see plenty of ads for other phones that are loud and proud and funny and obnoxious. I see carrier ads that push everything but the iPhone with bogof deals up the wahzoo.

As for sales people, have you ever been to an Apple store? Have you ever seen anyone try to sell an iPhone there? No! They do not hire sales people; they hire customer service people. The Apple Store staff answer questions and take orders. The only thing they used to try to sell is Apple Care, and they don't even do that much anymore.

I have had a few occasions to go to AT&T stores, and I have never seen anyone there try to sell an iPhone. I don't believe Apple pays much, if anything by way of commissions. The salespeople would much rather sell an Android phone. They have no incentive to sell iPhones. People walk in and ask for the iPhone by name. No one "sells" an iPhone.

The reason more people are buying iPhones these days in America is because more people want iPhones; period! If increasing sales for BBs was as easy as making more ad buys and paying larger commissions, then the leaders of the company are more stupid than we thought. All things considered, I don't think ads and commissions have anything to do with it.

[_StephenBB81]

OK folks, this is an interesting discussion, but one that I have seen on every non-Apple fansite. People are trying to figure out why the iPhone sells in the same circumstances where their product of choice does not. Eventually, it always comes down to Apple's marketing.

I don't buy this for a moment. Admittedly, I do not watch much TV. But what I do watch is not dominated by Apple commercials. I see plenty of ads for other phones that are loud and proud and funny and obnoxious. I see carrier ads that push everything but the iPhone with bogof deals up the wahzoo.

As for sales people, have you ever been to an Apple store? Have you ever seen anyone try to sell an iPhone there? No! They do not hire sales people; they hire customer service people. The Apple Store staff answer questions and take orders. The only thing they used to try to sell is Apple Care, and they don't even do that much anymore.

I have had a few occasions to go to AT&T stores, and I have never seen anyone there try to sell an iPhone. I don't believe Apple pays much, if anything by way of commissions. The salespeople would much rather sell an Android phone. They have no incentive to sell iPhones. People walk in and ask for the iPhone by name. No one "sells" an iPhone.

The reason more people are buying iPhones these days in America is because more people want iPhones; period! If increasing sales for BBs was as easy as making more ad buys and paying larger commissions, then the leaders of the company are more stupid than we thought. All things considered, I don't think ads and commissions have anything to do with it.

WHY do Americans what iPhones? because they saw the Ad! they don't know they exist if they don't see the Ads, and it isn't just about print ads, it is about Store presentation, in Every store that sells iPhones the iPhone display is beautiful, the iPad display is beautiful, the iPod Display is Beautiful Apple knows how to present product,

you truly are delusional if you don't think that matters, if Advertising didn't matter Facebook, and Google couldn't exist their business models are based on selling advertising and people wouldn't buy it if it didn't matter.

Apple devices do as they say they do in the ads, people see the ads they try the devices which are well maintained in the store fronts are easy to find, and because restocking is easy there is no incentive to sell someone who wants to buy a premium product another one at a lower cost.

Commissions are not set by the manufacturer, they are set by the Carriers, you don't get a cheque from Apple, Blackberry, HTC, Samsung as a AT&T rep it comes from AT&T.

We'll have to disagree that no one sells and iPhone since this is one point we will not agree on, the number of times I have been asked if I want an iPhone when looking at phones at Rogers is impossible to account for if I saw I have a blackberry the spiel begins why I "must have" an iPhone, and I visit carrier stores across the country

[ignites]

EMA is really many distinct markets. 1 million in 3 weeks doesn't tell me anything about how things are going in Western Europe. Sounds like things are going great for RIM in the UK though.

only explaination... 1 million people moved from US to UK in the last 3 weeks.... awesome LOL

[brucep1]

OK folks, this is an interesting discussion, but one that I have seen on every non-Apple fansite. People are trying to figure out why the iPhone sells in the same circumstances where their product of choice does not. Eventually, it always comes down to Apple's marketing.

I don't buy this for a moment. Admittedly, I do not watch much TV. But what I do watch is not dominated by Apple commercials. I see plenty of ads for other phones that are loud and proud and funny and obnoxious. I see carrier ads that push everything but the iPhone with bogof deals up the wahzoo.

As for sales people, have you ever been to an Apple store? Have you ever seen anyone try to sell an iPhone there? No! They do not hire sales people; they hire customer service people. The Apple Store staff answer questions and take orders. The only thing they used to try to sell is Apple Care, and they don't even do that much anymore.

I have had a few occasions to go to AT&T stores, and I have never seen anyone there try to sell an iPhone. I don't believe Apple pays much, if anything by way of commissions. The salespeople would much rather sell an Android phone. They have no incentive to sell iPhones. People walk in and ask for the iPhone by name. No one "sells" an iPhone.

The reason more people are buying iPhones these days in America is because more people want iPhones; period! If increasing sales for BBs was as easy as making more ad buys and paying larger commissions, then the leaders of the company are more stupid than we thought. All things considered, I don't think ads and commissions have anything to do with it.

To be honest, I agree with you. The massive success of the iphone can be attributed more to being a great product than having sales reps in stores. The phone sells itself.

Marketing has something to do with it, but the build and complete product of the iphone 4 is the main reason its still selling over a year after its release.

[brucep1]

WHY do Americans what iPhones? because they saw the Ad! they don't know they exist if they don't see the Ads, and it isn't just about print ads, it is about Store presentation, in Every store that sells iPhones the iPhone display is beautiful, the iPad display is beautiful, the iPod Display is Beautiful Apple knows how to present product,

you truly are delusional if you don't think that matters, if Advertising didn't matter Facebook, and Google couldn't exist their business models are based on selling advertising and people wouldn't buy it if it didn't matter.

Apple devices do as they say they do in the ads, people see the ads they try the devices which are well maintained in the store fronts are easy to find, and because restocking is easy there is no incentive to sell someone who wants to buy a premium product another one at a lower cost.

Commissions are not set by the manufacturer, they are set by the Carriers, you don't get a cheque from Apple, Blackberry, HTC, Samsung as a AT&T rep it comes from AT&T.

We'll have to disagree that no one sells and iPhone since this is one point we will not agree on, the number of times I have been asked if I want an iPhone when looking at phones at Rogers is impossible to account for if I saw I have a blackberry the spiel begins why I "must have" an iPhone, and I visit carrier stores across the country

If success for a product is that simple, dont you think RIM would have done that a long time ago?

[lnichols]

Some of it boils down a lot to what the carrier is pushing. Prime example, my dad is on Verizon. Few months ago decided he wanted to upgrade his Moto Razr to an iPhone. Now you would think that the Verizon store would say sure, here you go. Instead they talked him into a DroidX telling him it was much better, etc, etc. Now there are going to be people who will only by BB, or iPhones, or Droids, but there is still a large market of undecideds or easily persuaded to change to another platform. I don't know how RIM could get carriers to push BB phones more.