Responding to RIM’s layoff announcement yesterday, Wall Street said the BlackBerry maker had met its worst nightmare in Apple… a one-trick pony about to be dragged to the glue factory by iOS 5 and iMessage.
BlackBerry Messenger was RIM’s best selling point, even attracting teens to the device usually found in corporations rather than college campuses. Now iMessage is “effectively identical,” making lame the pony from Waterloo. Even worse, RIM limped into the smartphone market too late and too limited.
“Consumers now want phones that provide a broad selection of software and services,” Needham & Company analyst Charlie Wolf told investors Friday. “What do you do when your one trick no longer works?” he asks.
Not only is RIM slow and essentially useless, the BlackBerry maker is caught in a squeeze play between the iPhone and Android. Expect a copy of iMessage to appear on Android handsets “as quickly as it can,” Wolf says.
Thursday, RIM announced it will cut costs, fire employees and take other measures to restrain the red ink. Wall Street analysts were quick to pile on, issuing six stock downgrades this morning. “Control + Alt + Delete” one observer remarked, leaving little doubt about the dire straights RIM finds itself.
As for how well RIM’s PlayBook tablet is doing against the iPad, RIM announced it shipped 500,000 units during the second quarter. However, the company did not release sales figures, leaving some analyst unsure just how well the tablet is actually performing.
Among those scratching their heads is Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White. White summed-up the entire blood-letting as “a disaster [that] turns into a nightmare.”
The nightmare is Apple, as the iPhone and iPad maker scoops up even more market share while RIM and Nokia stumble and fall by the wayside.
