Research In Motion's Stock Falls 27%

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Research In Motion just can't catch a break. Sales are down and the company's stock is waaay down.

Research In Motion Ltd.’s stock fell 27% Friday after the company reported its new line of BlackBerrys isn’t selling nearly as well as investors hoped. Chief Executive Thorsten Heins has staked the company’s future on a new operating system, BlackBerry 10, which it unveiled early this year.
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And BB10 isn't coming to the playbook anymore, Can we just get android for it already?
 
Investors expected it to sell good? The hell ..


Here's the problem, the market sector is divided into two major players - Android and iOS .. and Windows for the few.

Most people who buy these types of phones want to be able to use their existing stuff. So an iOS customer would likely buy an Apple phone. An Android customer would like buy an android phone. They're part of that ecosystem.

They took way too long to get the new Blackberry OS out and it cost them big time. They should have switched to making a slick customized enterprise version (although Google has beaten them to a lot of that) of Android. Much more appealing then and it could have been virtually identically to what they have .. with all the apps of the play store.
 
They owned the corporate world, then got arrogant and sat on their butt's while iOS slowly become more popular, and then android crept in and then they both took over in the corporate world as people brought their own devices to use for work, now BB has to play catch up but it offers nothing to do so to take top reign..
 
The problem with BB10 phones.. lack of apps and priced too high.


I have a Z10 through work and it works great for what it does but lack of apps makes the experience suck.
 
sixpac said:
The problem with BB10 phones.. lack of apps and priced too high.


I have a Z10 through work and it works great for what it does but lack of apps makes the experience suck.
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They also don't offer anything that I and most of my friends, usually considered pretty savvy tech consumers, can recall that would make them *more* desirable than the leading ecosystems...

If you are starting from the freaking bottom of the barrel, you better damn well make sure you have some obvious advantages over the market leaders if you want to steal their customers from them...
 
This is depressing to read about. Blackberries are a lot less crashy than Androids and get much better battery life. Really, only iPhones compete with them on endurance and you can't manage them as well in a business enterprise. I guess there's Windows phones, but they're really uncommon. It sucks that we're stuck with a whole mountain of cheap, unreliable Android devices that have a ton of apps that pretty much monitor everything you're doing.

The Q10 is pretty much an unbeatable phone that has an actual keyboard that makes it useable for editing novels and typing long e-mails.
 
Spidey329 said:
Investors expected it to sell good? The hell ..


Here's the problem, the market sector is divided into two major players - Android and iOS .. and Windows for the few.

Most people who buy these types of phones want to be able to use their existing stuff. So an iOS customer would likely buy an Apple phone. An Android customer would like buy an android phone. They're part of that ecosystem.

They took way too long to get the new Blackberry OS out and it cost them big time. They should have switched to making a slick customized enterprise version (although Google has beaten them to a lot of that) of Android. Much more appealing then and it could have been virtually identically to what they have .. with all the apps of the play store.
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Pretty much sums up my thoughts.

And I hate that the Playbook isn't getting BB10. It's still the best all-around 7" tablet IMO. My Xoom just sits in the corner while still I bring my playbook on trips for work.
 
I have seen a lot more windows phones than BB so I think they are even less common. RIM was a victim of their own success. And now they have no reason to exist , we said before they should have sold out while they still had a sliver of value but they keep hanging on. The only chance they have is to rush some developing market and forget the developed world.
 
I hate to see a Canadian company doing so bad, and hope they can smarten up and figure something out.

One thing that Blackberry is awesome for is the BES server. But seems lot of companies are cutting cost and rather than issuing blackberries they just say to bring your own device and find work arounds to the lack of central management. The BES and central management was the main attraction to Blackberry in the business world. I managed the BES server and it was a dream, then some one shows up with an apple and it's a pain in the ass.

RIM should also go Android, that would help them a lot. The Blackberry just does not have the app selection of IOS and Android.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
This is depressing to read about. Blackberries are a lot less crashy than Androids and get much better battery life. Really, only iPhones compete with them on endurance and you can't manage them as well in a business enterprise.
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I'm not sure how you can generalize all android phones into some vague singular category to be able to claim they are "less crashy". That's probably true if you include all the noname Chinese companies producing shit phones, but take Samsung for example, and your claim sounds like pure BS.

My Galaxy note 2 typically has 80%+ charge left when I plug it in at night. iPhones must be able to last months :rolleyes:
 
I can't say I own a BB device, but having played around with the Z10...I can see it's appeal as a business device. It's well integrated and streamlined if what you need is a phone+PDA (what ever happened to that term Personal Digital Assistant?). It may not have all the newest apps and features, but it seemed to deliver phone, email and basic web browsing with refreshing directness.

It's a great old-person smartphone. But about 2 years behind the times for anyone under 55.
 
So now the stock is worth $0.75/share instead of $1/share?

Seriously though, the stock went from $230/share in 2007 to $10/share today, a loss of 95%, which is the surest sign that they are headed down the same road as Palm Inc.
 
I liked my BlackBerry Bold 9800 that work issued me. It was my first BB and the camera pretty much sucked but that thing was stable as hell compared to my Android experiences.

Seeing RIM as a sinking ship, we converted to the iPhone 5 and aside from battery life I've no complaints once I got used to the on-screen keyboard (I do miss Swype and haptic feedback). As far as Red Squirrel's post, you bet your ass that there are MDM solutions that take the place of BES. I know because we evaluated several before settling on AirWatch. It works very well and does a fine job of controlling device functionality.
 
sixpac said:
The problem with BB10 phones.. lack of apps and priced too high.


I have a Z10 through work and it works great for what it does but lack of apps makes the experience suck.
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Same here. Blackberry Z10 for work. Its good for email and that's about it. The app store is actually worse than I was expecting. Some apps that I had on my torch 9800 aren't there and the other apps are mostly poor android ports that don't work that well. Also, the battery life sucks on top of that.

I held out some hope for BlackBerry (formerly research in motion), but its too little too late. Eventually big business will stop blindly buying blackberries. So overpriced for what they do compared to the competition... So glad I have a Note 2 for my personal device...
 
If I worked for RIM, I'd be keeping a lookout for a new job, there's only one direction this company is going, and that's down into the ground further then it already has been.
 
When I visited South America a few years ago people where still in love with Blackberry. I tried telling them the writing was on the wall. They didn't listen.
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
They also don't offer anything that I and most of my friends, usually considered pretty savvy tech consumers, can recall that would make them *more* desirable than the leading ecosystems...
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The keyboard.

4 year ago everyone at the office used a Blackberry phone. Company was growing, so I had to increase the licenses on our Blackberry server about every 6 months. We peaked at 25 licenses, and I was planning on buying another 5 when one of the managers insisted on using his new iPhone.

I'm now down to 1 Blackberry device on my server. Another user has a new Blackberry (because they wanted to keep the keyboard), but it's connected over active sync.

From 25 users (would actually be closer to 40 users due to company growth) to 2 users in 4 years. Pretty much explains why it's over for Blackberry.
 
I actually like bb10 and considered looking for a cheap one to try for a while. The problem is that it's so late in the game and most consumers that wasn't a smartphone have one and are locked into an ecosystem. When you have dozens of apps already paid for you don't want to buy them again without food reason.

Might still find a bb though I do like to try them all.
 
nutzo said:
The keyboard.

4 year ago everyone at the office used a Blackberry phone. Company was growing, so I had to increase the licenses on our Blackberry server about every 6 months. We peaked at 25 licenses, and I was planning on buying another 5 when one of the managers insisted on using his new iPhone.

I'm now down to 1 Blackberry device on my server. Another user has a new Blackberry (because they wanted to keep the keyboard), but it's connected over active sync.

From 25 users (would actually be closer to 40 users due to company growth) to 2 users in 4 years. Pretty much explains why it's over for Blackberry.
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I never saw the appeal of their keyboards. Maybe way back in the day they were good, but after using the slide on keyboard on my G1, everything else was lame. The onscreen keyboard on almost all android phones is better then the BB keyboard. The only way I can think someone would think the BB keyboard is better is if they got used to it and refused to change.
 
GotNoRice said:
I'm not sure how you can generalize all android phones into some vague singular category to be able to claim they are "less crashy". That's probably true if you include all the noname Chinese companies producing shit phones, but take Samsung for example, and your claim sounds like pure BS.

My Galaxy note 2 typically has 80%+ charge left when I plug it in at night. iPhones must be able to last months :rolleyes:
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I can generalize all android phones into one category because they're all android phones so if I say "all android phones" that accurately generalizes them into a general category containing all phones which have android installed. It's pretty super awesome how that works so nicely, huh? :D Also, I never said "all android phones are crashy" and I did clearly make sure that I added that lament-y thing about there being a mountain of cheap android phones around which might lead someone who read my post thoughtfully to understand that probably includes those companies you, in a very racist way, point out are Chinese and make yucky phones. If you hate Asians so much, why are you so happy about Samsung? They subcontract a lot of parts and production to the same Chinese-owned companies that Apple uses and that produce devices under their own brand identities or are rebranded by other third parties. Seriously, racism is irrational. :( (Except for people with a Southern accent...they're evil and the whole world knows it because they televise NASCAR and hunting/fishing shows where they speak in their awful dialect and then insist on broadcasting it to the whole world.)
 
Whoever said that the BES server was a dream to manage has got to be freaking kidding? We had upwards of 50 employees on ours at one time ( about 3 years ago) and now were down to a couple. Upgrading to the latest version was a nightmare and the arrogant non helpful tech support pricks at RIM were not much help. Good riddance.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
I can generalize all android phones into one category because they're all android phones so if I say "all android phones" that accurately generalizes them into a general category containing all phones which have android installed. It's pretty super awesome how that works so nicely, huh?
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So, were you looking to make a comment that was actually relevant, or just looking to bash android and hope no one noticed that you weren't directly referring to phones that people actually buy?

CreepyUncleGoogle said:
Also, I never said "all android phones are crashy"
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You said this:

CreepyUncleGoogle said:
Blackberries are a lot less crashy than Androids and get much better battery life.
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A vague generalization that fails to hold true when you consider the phones people actually buy.

Though I guess it makes sense that Blackberry could be more stable in certain situations; the lack of any relevant apps means you never have to worry about a poorly coded app crashing your phone. ;)

CreepyUncleGoogle said:
companies you, in a very racist way, point out are Chinese and make yucky phones. If you hate Asians so much, why are you so happy about Samsung?
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My comment was in reference to the country of China, not the Chinese race. I don't feel that I've made any racist remarks against Asians, and I certainly don't hate them. This is what I said:

GotNoRice said:
I'm not sure how you can generalize all android phones into some vague singular category to be able to claim they are "less crashy". That's probably true if you include all the noname Chinese companies producing shit phones, but take Samsung for example, and your claim sounds like pure BS.
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Fact is, there are a lot of noname companies in China and they do produce a lot of shit phones.

CreepyUncleGoogle said:
They subcontract a lot of parts and production to the same Chinese-owned companies that Apple uses and that produce devices under their own brand identities or are rebranded by other third parties.
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Samsung owns their own FABs and produce many of their own products, they even act as OEMs for other companies. They currently operate FABs in Giheung, Korea and Austin, TX. Samsung is only *just now* setting up a factory in China, that isn't expected to be operational until 2014.

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/foundry/manufacturing/overview
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/news-events/press-releases/detail?newsId=12043

But speaking of Chinese companies that do produce devices for companies like Apple, the difference is that they are under contracts with strict terms and in most cases extra layers of quality control (it's not uncommon to see Apple, etc employees AT the oem factories performing independent quality control). Not to mention that they don't have the burden of actually designing the device. The phones they make on their own are designs that were most likely terrible all the way from the drawing board, with almost no quality control. There are also numerous Chinese companies that don't serve as OEMs for companies like Apple, where it really is their purpose in life to produce cheap crap that people in countries like the US are gullible enough to buy.

Seriously, racism is irrational. :( (Except for people with a Southern accent...they're evil and the whole world knows it because they televise NASCAR and hunting/fishing shows where they speak in their awful dialect and then insist on broadcasting it to the whole world.)
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Again, I've made no racist remarks. I made a reference to China the same way someone might make a reference to America - talking about the country and not a particular race.
 
The should have spent the last two years of grace creating bb-like apps and porting tools and switching over to be an android phone maker.
 
GotNoRice said:
So, were you looking to make a comment that was actually relevant, or just looking to bash android and hope no one noticed that you weren't directly referring to phones that people actually buy?

You said this:

A vague generalization that fails to hold true when you consider the phones people actually buy.
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Someone must be buying these other android devices that you're not happy with so yeah, people actually do buy them since producing them and then not expecting to or actually making any sales would mean that there'd be no point in doing it.

Though I guess it makes sense that Blackberry could be more stable in certain situations; the lack of any relevant apps means you never have to worry about a poorly coded app crashing your phone. ;)
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So true. In fact, I don't think there should be a reason to load an app on a phone. If it doesn't do what its supposed to right out of the box, then it's isn't a good product to begin with. Blackberries at least can edit MS Office documents without needing any additional software.

My comment was in reference to the country of China, not the Chinese race. I don't feel that I've made any racist remarks against Asians, and I certainly don't hate them. This is what I said:
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I dunno, it just seems that way from your comments and screen name.

Fact is, there are a lot of noname companies in China and they do produce a lot of shit phones.
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I've never known of any company that doesn't have some sort of name and I don't think that's any different in China.

Samsung owns their own FABs and produce many of their own products, they even act as OEMs for other companies. They currently operate FABs in Giheung, Korea and Austin, TX. Samsung is only *just now* setting up a factory in China, that isn't expected to be operational until 2014.

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/foundry/manufacturing/overview
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/news-events/press-releases/detail?newsId=12043
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Yup and they buy stuff from other companies, many of which are in China just like most other large companies. Raw materials like rare earth metals and other industrial goods or finished products all come from companies that have headquarters in China. Samsung and the rest of the world depends on Chinese production and there's just no way of escaping that.

But speaking of Chinese companies that do produce devices for companies like Apple, the difference is that they are under contracts with strict terms and in most cases extra layers of quality control (it's not uncommon to see Apple, etc employees AT the oem factories performing independent quality control). Not to mention that they don't have the burden of actually designing the device. The phones they make on their own are designs that were most likely terrible all the way from the drawing board, with almost no quality control. There are also numerous Chinese companies that don't serve as OEMs for companies like Apple, where it really is their purpose in life to produce cheap crap that people in countries like the US are gullible enough to buy.
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So products are somehow molded or pressed much better in the same machine because Apple or Samsung contracted it? Um, maybe they spend a few extra seconds looking at it, but I know production peoples and nothing changes from one buyer to the next except, in a few cases, the name printed on the thing they ordered.

Again, I've made no racist remarks. I made a reference to China the same way someone might make a reference to America - talking about the country and not a particular race.
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Meh...you just have a pretty obviously not Asian-friendly screen name and harbor a low opinion of Chinese products (which you're generalizing about, by the way) and it makes everyone's favorite Uncle wonder.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
Blackberries are a lot less crashy than Androids and get much better battery life.
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Are you nuts? I have over a dozen coworkers with BB's and the one thing they all complain about is when the dame thing freezes or crashes. Why? Because it takes the bloody thing nearly 6 to 8 minutes to boot back up and be functional. 6 to 8 freaking minutes!

imyourzero said:
I liked my BlackBerry Bold 9800 that work issued me. It was my first BB and the camera pretty much sucked but that thing was stable as hell compared to my Android experiences.
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I beg to differ, in the year and a half of having my Samsung Galaxy Nexus the one thing I have witnessed is how much BB's freeze and crash in comparison to my Android phone. And then how long it takes to reboot those darn things.
 
I had always heard about the long boot times for BBs. I never used any of the old ones, but the 9700s and 9800s would boot up in less than a minute easily. I supported probably 40-50 of them in an enterprise environment and we never had problems with them freezing or crashing.

Are they my preferred mobile platform these days? Hell no, I like the iPhone much better in many ways. But it's definitely not my experience that BBs have stability issues or lengthy boot times. At least with the newer ones.
 
On more of a general point, I think it is laughable that phones take a long time to boot. The main thing that causes long boot times AFAIK is initializing and detecting hardware. On PC this makes sense because you have millions of possible combination and hardware getting moved onto and off of them periodically. But on a phone this is just plain a joke. I find it ridiculous that my Windows 8 machine with an old slow hard drive can boot up faster than any phone I have ever used from any company / OS.
 
ZeroBarrier said:
Are you nuts? I have over a dozen coworkers with BB's and the one thing they all complain about is when the dame thing freezes or crashes. Why? Because it takes the bloody thing nearly 6 to 8 minutes to boot back up and be functional. 6 to 8 freaking minutes!
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I work around lots of Blackberries and none of them take more than like 2 minutes to turn on. Sure that's a while, but most humans exaggerate stuff and have almost no patience so a couple minutes quickly turns into a much larger number.

I beg to differ, in the year and a half of having my Samsung Galaxy Nexus the one thing I have witnessed is how much BB's freeze and crash in comparison to my Android phone. And then how long it takes to reboot those darn things.
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I've rarely seen any Blackberry crash that wasn't a faulty device that should have been swapped for a replacement. On the other hand, Androids that force close apps or have to be power cycled seem to be the norm.
 
I was pretty much Blackberry's target demographic: loyal BB keyboard user, owner of multiple generations of BBs and someone who even gave the Playbook a shot. There were some huge missteps that alienated me from the brand and I'm doubtful that I'll ever buy another BB.

1. The 9930 launch was a fiasco. Issues included: random self-bricking and OS instability. Forums were filled with issues and it was their first phone (that I remember) to have people questioning BB's build quality.

2. CEO replacement. Thorsten Heins comes across as extremely risk-adverse and apologetic. At a time when companies like Google and Microsoft are making extremely progressive and risky moves, Heins seem a bit lost in their wake. Heins and Tim Cook could be BFFs though.

3. Alicia Keys. Seriously? ...if it were announced on April 1 at least.

4. The US release of the Q10. Most carriers are just receiving it now. Sprint hasn't even announced its release date and isn't carrying the Z10. At one time, Sprint used to release new BBs before any other carrier. Nowadays, Sprint doesn't even care if it carries their products.

5. (More recently) Thorsten went back on a huge promise. The Playbook was promised a BB10 release and Thorsten recently announced that it will not. I'm pretty sure that rule #93 is: Don't piss off loyal fans that beta-tested your products.

These are just some of the reasons that I've lost faith in the brand. I actually switched to a Galaxy S3 in January as a temporary test run. I hated the touch keyboard, but quickly grew to love Google's ecosystem. (In NYC, Google Maps are a must!) I figured that I'd stick with it for a few months and get a Q10. It's almost July and there's no sight of the Q10 (on Sprint), so I ended up upgrading to a S4 and love it. I'm not even an app user, but love the innovative features of the latest Android phones. For the moment, Google has won my loyalty for the next few years. Sorry, BB!
 
I loved my Blackberry when I had it, and I still loan it out for international use (Blackberry Tour with all the adapters etc). They really focused on the commercial, and I think that hurt them in the long run. Always gonna be a soft sport for RIM in my heart, just don't seem them surviving as a company. Maybe they will do something as a back end with apps and network etc.
 
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