The number of BlackBerry phones sold fell 41% year-on-year in the last RIM fiscal quarter. Sequentially the fall was 30%. Though surprisingly poor, I note that Nokia’s smartphone business fell even more dramatically last quarter (down 50% y/y and 39% sequentially). LG also saw a 44% decline in unit shipments in Q1. The history of … Continue reading “RIM's tailspin”
RIM’s CEO, Thorsten Heins was quoted as saying, “We plan to refocus on the enterprise business and capitalize on our leading position in this segment. We believe that BlackBerry cannot succeed if we tried to be everybody’s darling and all things to all people. Therefore, we plan to build on our strength.” via RIM to … Continue reading “RIM to give up”
Here are the highlights from RIM’s latest quarter: 14.1 million BlackBerry smartphones shipped, 13 million sold through 150k PlayBook shipped with sell-through slightly higher. 800k PlayBooks shipped so far. BlackBerry subscriber base up to 75 million High growth cited for U.K., France, South Africa, Mexico and Argentina, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. RIM is the #1 … Continue reading “The parable of RIM”
RIM shipped 10.6 million Blackberries and 200,000 PlayBooks in the last quarter. Management noted that their sell-through was significantly higher for Blackberry (13.7 million) but seems to be very weak for PlayBook as the prior quarter saw 500k units shipped. Additional PlayBook units this quarter probably mostly went into new channels in Asia and there … Continue reading “RIM and the lamentation of the analyst”
Технологии и наука | Хорацио Дедиу: Никой не иска да купи Research In Motion RIM – Капитал. My thanks again to Andrian Georgiev for interview questions [Bulgarian] related to RIM. My answers to his questions (in English) are below: Q: What should RIM do to reinvent itself? Should it stray from its business-oriented image? RIM … Continue reading “Capital.bg | Nobody wants to buy RIM”
In their monthly survey update on US phone usage, comScore reported that by the end of April 74.6 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones. In the same period a year ago only 48.1 million did. The percent of smartphone users out of total phone users has reached 32%. The following data points can also be … Continue reading “Peak RIM”
“Jim and Mike brought the company to where it is … which is part of the biggest problem they’re facing,” said Charter Equity analyst Ed Snyder, who has covered RIM since its public listing in 1997, two years before the BlackBerry was launched. “They’re stuck in the past. They know what worked and keep playing … Continue reading “Is RIM's management the cause of its failure?”
I produced two alternate views of the primary mobile phone brands in terms of volumes sold and operating profit in Q1. These views[1] allow a comparison by categorized competitors. I grouped dedicated smartphone vendors (SMART) vs. diversified and used color coding for profitability (blue colors indicate loss-making vendors). The same view is drawn for profitability. … Continue reading “Apple, RIM and HTC captured 75% of mobile phone operating profits in Q1”
Yesterday RIM reported their quarterly earnings. The results were mixed to slightly negative and the shares were down 10% in after-hours trading. I’ll work through the smartphone market data at a later time but for now what I want to focus on is RIM’s strategy which really means understanding RIM’s intentions or their approach to … Continue reading “Understanding RIM's tablet platform app strategy”
First, a round-up of the quarter’s numbers: 14.2 million devices shipped, sell-through: 12.3 million expect to ship 14.5 to 15 million units in the next quarter ASP of approximately $315 US, UK and Canada are 56% of sales US represented 34% of the total revenue Last year US represented 57% of revenue BlackBerry Torch launched … Continue reading “[Updated] RIM's sales down 15% in the US, up 112% outside the US”
