It’s been a bad year for RIM so far. Their BlackBerry business has been harried on all sides by the iPhone, and their stock has delated largely thanks to the arterial spray of customers they are losing to Apple.
Worse, in response to the iPad, RIM released the much heralded BlackBerry Playbook, which might just go down in the books as one of the worst, least functional and woefully misguided pieces of consumer technology ever.
Finally, just last week, Apple totally eliminated RIM’s sole advantage over iOS by announcing iMessage, which Wall Street is already saying will kill BlackBerry’s remaining prospects in enterprise.
Anyone surprised that RIM”s now announcing layoffs after seeing their first quarter results? I thought not.
According to the Research In Motion’s quarterly results, net income for the quarter was just $695 million, or $1.33 per share diluted, compared with net income of $934 million in the prior quarter and net income of $769 million in the same quarter last year.
Needless to say, RIM is trying to chalk this up to some unexpected delays in exciting new product introductions, as opposed to being vaporized by Apple. They claim they’ll see “strong profit growth in the latter part of fiscal 2012.”
That’s a year away, though, so in the meantime, RIM is reducing headcount in what they are calling a “realignment” that will be “focused on taking out redundancies and a reallocation of resources to allow us to focus on the areas that offer the highest growth opportunities and align with RIM strategic objectives, such as accelerating new product introductions.”
I smell a debacle. Anyone else?
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
57 responses to “Punched To Death By iPhone, iPad And iMessages, RIM Announces Layoffs”
Studies actually seem to show most BB users went to Android.
But the fact remains. So it doesn’t matter where they go.
Basically, they are not buying Blackberry and that’s a HUGE problem. Android, iPhone whatever will make this company fold at some point unless they make a major comeback with something totally outrageous
Not that I would ever, EVER buy a Playbook, but I heard it was an alright bit of kit. Better than a lot of Android devices, or am I wrong?
I don’t think I would miss RIM if it goes down…
Like many Mac devotees, I have a blackberry (bold 9700) and will get the bold 9900 when it comes out. Everything else I have is Mac, including iPad, iPods, iMacs, MacBook Air and MacBook Pros. why? I like the tactile keyboard, I love their email, extremely intuitive ui, long battery life, great enterprise security and to the extent that I care about apps I can get them on my iPad. Why do all you guys get off on trashing everything not Apple. RIM are an excellent company and in many ways innovated the smartphone industry. They have huge loyalty in the business world and they will retain that. They have been at the phone game a lot longer than Apple, don’t write them off so quick.
BlackBerries are counter-intuitive, clunky, outdated and slow. I know. I have one. I also have an iPhone, which is intuitive, sleek, of it’s time and adequately paced. Guess which one my employer bought, and which one my own money went on? Guess which one gets tossed aside at night and at weekends, and which one is in my pocket 24*7?
Failure to innovate. They were way too comfortable with where they were and made no effort to ensure it stayed that way. That OS is horrific!
This Tech Companies totally miss the Concept of Innovation and otherwise just decide to Imitate Apple and twick` some few bits from here and there. And whey they do that Apple has already shifted the Gear towards 360 Degrees Again! To beat Apple You don`t have to be like Apple you need to stay around the boundaries of where Apple doesn’t necessarily touch or where it actually ended and complete the Cycle.It isn’t that Hard when you sit on the Drawing Board as Mr.Steve Says.But they Copy Cats decide to just imitate and Imitate and Copy and Copy.So how do they expect to beat Apple if not getting shut down???
Steve is a Genius but he is a 99% or if not 101% Hard-worker he is .He works day and night thinks hard n smarter n he is surrounded by the best tech n soft team engineers , APple pays good takes care of their Employees and Bottom line Loyalty gives you the cutting edge guys in building a Truly great Organization which will give you great cutting edge products and solutions.
So stop imitating and start innovate and truly Innovate not like iPad and iPhone stealing pinch to zoom n other cutting edge Ideas Apple Innovated.There is always room for improvement .
Apple beats them All n they Do this at there Own League and Nor Google nor Anyone is catching them soon. They are concentrating on their turf Not wanting to be Doing everything!Thats where they get to be differentiated.
It’s NO SECRET that RIM is in trouble. What CultofMac is potraying that this all comes down to the sales on iphones and ipads and the like. That is completely inaccurate, not factual and absolutely misguided! RIM is in trouble because of their OWN doing.
Realignment is necessary.. Don’t forgot RIM has only proper been innovating the latest technology within their smartphones for a period as long as Apple has. Before that, there was NO incentive to innovate. They owned the business market and were happy with that, and that was their downfall.
I guarantee that RIM will drop further before they bounce back.. but they know this already. The launch of OS 7 is nothing but a cushion on which to make this fall slightly less painful. QNX will be their lifesaver. It’s technology integrated within the American military and now within a tablet that has got amazing potential, apart from its “scare factor” (once u go RIM , u go down with the ship). They’ll bounce back. I love my iPad.. but I’m sure RIM will be around for a decade (maybe two) to come.
I agree entirely apart from their lack of innovation. Don’t forget, BBM is a RIM innovation. And so is PUSH technology. They’re even trying to pioneer NFC out within their loyal smartphone customer base. Jobs is a genius but that is a whole different story. RIM never looked 10 years into the future. Now they are.. It’s a little late, hence the state of affairs. But they’ve started making important acquisitions and I’m certain they’ll build on them. The same way Jobs brought Apple up, JIM and MIKE at RIM brought their company from the ground up. They’ll do good taking care of it if they can take better care of their customers.
An iPhone isn’t a phone. It’s a personal device with the ability to send calls. The poor battery life and poor signal issues highlight that fact! They built the phone bit of it LAST!.
Blackberries are built with the phone user in mind, who’d like some gaming capabilities. They aren’t meant to be a “sleek adequately paced” system but it gets all communication functions done QUICKER than you can get it done on the iPhone. Even that I bet you can’t disagree.
They just need to innovate more on making it a whole device. QNX is there for that purpose.
They will fall, those BB are outdated and chunk, I WOULD NEVER USE A BB!, I will stick with IOS for a very long time! LONG LIVE APPLE!
I would disagree. Battery like on my iPhone 4 is great (even with a jailbrake) I can make calls on my network all the time no issues, and hitting phone and having it dial the number seems pretty seamless to me. Guess I could get a black berry and scroll until I get to my contacts then scroll some more or type until I get to the contact…
Maybe RIM & NOKIA can merge and start making more products from yesteryear – maybe steampunk phones…
iTard?
Finally a logical response on this blog. I commend you good sir.
I think you took too big of a sip outta the kool aid my man.
I hate to be the voice of reason on this blog, but clearly it needs one. Competition is good, regardless of who it is. Without RIM, iOS may not have been half of what it is today.
You’re clearly a misguided individual. Nokia is still very relevant in many parts of the world.
I’m sorry, the news is not completely correct.
You state:
“”They claim they’ll see “strong profit growth in the latter part of fiscal 2012.”
That’s a year away, though,…”This is not a year away. The fiscal of 2012 is this year. Yes that might sound odd, but in investors language and at stock exchange market it means this years ‘numbers’.So they are expecting high sales later this year, not in one year.
RIM = next Palm.
only question: who will buy the carcass?
answer: Facebook.
bad post
Wow someone posted something on here that I agree with in it’s entirety.
I hope they make something that will get them back in game. Black Berry phones are quite good! More competition pushes Apple to put out better products, so hopefully, they stay in the game…
No, uFaggot.
Yes, maybe RIM will be soon out of the game. The reasons are some obvious some not very clear (for example is not very clear the reason of their attitude in front of the dramatic changes on the market last couple of years). But the Playbook is by far the best tablet on the market, a piece of art, there is no space to argue, just look the specs and just play with one. And QNX is 2 years distance ahead the other tablet OS’s.
The discussion on why iPad without cams (please dont tell me iPad has cams), without Flash and with 512 M RAM has 95% of the market and RIM will collapse could be very interesting, no doubt about it, but something is sure.: it is not the quality and the performances the determinative factors in the marketing/sellings war.
Ha, ha! “integrated within the American military”
Yeah, sure guys, RIM is bliss!
I currently own a berry and an iPhone. I will be replacing my berry with an Android phone within the next few weeks. There is a definite observable movement away from BB’s – nary a week goes by without one of my FB or Twitter contacts announcing their defection to either Android or iOS.
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