Thanks for all those responses. It's always nice to see some intelligent discussions with out the typical Apple and even BB Zombies chiming in with their "if you are unhappy with BB than you must be a troll" rants.
After all it's just an electronic device and many of us would like to be able to move forward into the latest and greatest new devices without being constrained to any particular platform or provider.
No one can predict the future all we can go by is history and where we are currently. In regards to their stock price it had a little pullback last week because of it's future sales against it's competition
Research In Motion: Analysts See Increasing Trouble Ahead - Eric Savitz - The Tech Trade - Forbes.
My feelings on Rim were from looking at it's stock price performance over the past 12 months and seeing the increasing market shares of the Droids and iphones.
The fact is Rim's stock is down -24.21% and the index of 500 stocks (SPY) is up +12.62% over the same period. This is certainly not a good sign.
The system I've used to view stocks over the past 10 years is simple . . . An example of it's methodology is: in the winter when oranges in the produce section are totally tasteless and consumers don't want them, their prices go down (supply). Then in the Summer when they are tasty and flavorful again consumers start buying them again and their prices go up (demand).
Stock prices travel up and down for the most part in the same way. If a stock is in "demand" it's share price goes up. When investors are selling shares "over supply" it's share price goes down.
So the first thing many investors look at is . . . is this particular stock out performing it's benchmark like the market (the S&P 500) or under performing the S&P 500?
Next, another barometer one can look at how is a particular stock performing against it's peers (stocks in a similar business).
Rim is struggling against both those indicators. Can things change . . . of course! No one can predict the future. But from my 3 years of experience with Rim PDA's . . . they have been really slow to make changes. True, the leading edge can also be the bleeding edge but a company just can't sit on it's old devices and watch the other platforms gaining huge market share out from underneath them. The Palm platform was slow to change and Rim stepped in and ate Palm's lunch. When I started using Palm, Rim only made pagers.
Now there are a slew of other devices on the market and many more coming and from the consumer end of the market, they want ease of use, good browsing and other bells and whistles like many app choices for a device that they are going to be owning for the next two years.
Just a few days ago even Rim announced that they will be allowing Android apps to be down loaded to the Playbook, maybe their management team is not totally brain dead yet!
Light Reading Mobile - Google - OS Watch: RIM Embraces Android at Arm's Length - Telecom News Analysis
I for one, would only get a 4G device at this juncture even though we are in the early months of the 4G networks. Interesting that the Motorola Zoom tablet is offering it with a free 4G upgrade if you send it back to them. Now that's great marketing IMO. Who wants to be stuck on a slower network for another 2 years especially when VZ says at this point says the access to their 4G network will cost the same as 3G.
If a tablet is only 3G now . . . I'd wait for a 4G version if you are going to connect that way. If I get an ipad2 myself, it will only be the $499 wifi version. I won't pay another $20 to VZ for like 1 GB. My feeling is if we have a data plan already for our BB's, we should be able to access those minutes (or jailbreak it and use Tether).
I'm sure the carriers will attempt to cap their data plans, but even with a 5GB cap down from unlimited, that's still a lot of monthly data for the average user.
I did notice stronger comments from our Canadian friends up there, but I wrote some comments off to Rim being a Canadian company :D