An aging line of smartphones coupled with shaken credibility led to Research in Motion shares falling 13 percent Friday morning. The slide was prompted by RIM Thursday cutting its shipment and sales forecast amid heated competition by Apple and Google’s Android.
“This further damages already low credibility, making them the ‘poster boy’ for a show-men story from here,” RBC Capital Markets’ analyst Mike Abramsky tells Bloomberg. RIM announced BlackBerry shipments would likely reach the low side of its previously-forecasted 13.5 million to 14.5 million units. Likewise, quarterly sales would be “slightly below” its earlier projection of $5.2 billion to $5.6 billion.
“They are getting hit by a combination of a stale portfolio and heated competition on devices,” Matt Thorton of Boston-based Avian Securities LLC told the news service. Perhaps such comments caused Co-CEO Jim Balsillie to tell analysts “the issue is an aging that happens in your higher-end products that affects your margin.”
RIM’s smartphone marketshare fell to 14 percent in the fourth-quarter of of 2010, down from 20 percent during the same period a year ago. By comparison, Android tripled its market share to 33 percent while Apple remained steady at 16 percent of the market, according to Canalys.
While another analyst suggested RIM revive its brand by adopting the Android operating system, Balsillie instead said the company would begin focusing on less-expensive BlackBerry models.
Monday, RIM opens the BlackBerry World conference in Orlando, Florida. As Disney revitalized the theme park, many are hoping the Waterloo, Ont.-based RIM can pump life into a self-described “aging” product.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
10 responses to “RIM Profits Drop Amid Increased Apple, Android Pressure”
BBM is the only reason people use this thing, not because its the best, but because so many people adopted it. They need to have something like that for Andriod and Apple. A clear cut program that each or dare I dream both use that allow people to communicate with each other that is native to mobile devices. And RIM would be done the next day.
I heard some rumbling about a month back of RIM doing a BBM app for Apple and Android. I guess that got snuffed as a bad idea LOL
I’ve had my iPhone 4 for about 7 months now… man I really miss my BB. I should never had switched.
Once again, share holders or should I say bag holders pay dearly for colossus mistakes and incompetence by the two co-tards. Take the loss and get out now while you still can get some money for your shares before they become worthless when RIM declares bankruptcy.
One could say the same thing about Apple Shares – sell now, they value is heading south. There is a reason their SVP sold his shares yesterday.