Problems at Research in Motion?

[mr friendly guy]

http://www.news.com.au/business/battere ... 6374787326

BLACKBERRY-maker Research in Motion has hired a team of bankers to help it weigh its options as its business erodes in the face of an exodus to the iPhone and Android smartphones.
RIM issued a dire warning about its business Tuesday, saying it is losing money for the second-consecutive quarter and will lay off a "significant" number of employees.
The company based in Waterloo, Ontario said it has hired J.P. Morgan and RBC Capital Markets to help it evaluate its options. Those including partnering with other companies, licensing software and overhauling its business, it said.

RIM made no mention of selling of the company. But new Chief Executive Thorsten Heins did not rule that out after RIM's last earnings report in late March.
Colin Gillis, an analyst with BGC Financial, said the company is in a downward slide that's not slowing. He said he doesn't see any buyers for RIM coming forward soon.
"Unfortunately, it falls into the too little, too late category," Gillis said. "It doesn't mean somebody won't try it. It doesn't mean it's going to be a savior for the company either."
The statement from RIM did not detail the coming layoffs, other than to say the company expects "significant spending reductions and headcount reductions in some areas throughout the remainder of the year."
Jefferies analyst Peter Misek said he expects RIM to announce as many as 5,000 layoffs soon. The company has about 16,500 employees now after cutting 2,000 jobs in July.
RIM said the company looks to save $1 billion - even as it transitions to its much-delayed "BlackBerry 10" software platform expected out later this year.
RIM's stock fell 7 percent, or 80 cents, to $10.43 in extended trading following the release of the company's statement. Before Tuesday's announcement, the stock had lost almost 75 percent in the last year.

The company that pioneered the smartphone market with its BlackBerry phones is facing the most difficult period in its history. RIM's U.S. share of smartphones dropped from 44 percent in 2009 to 10 percent in 2011, according to market researcher NPD Group.
It still has 78 million active subscribers across the globe, but Apple Inc.'s iPhone and smartphones from companies including Samsung and HTC that use Google Inc.'s Android software are gobbling up market share.

"The on-going competitive environment is impacting our business in the form of lower volumes and highly competitive pricing dynamics in the marketplace," Heins said in Tuesday's statement. He said the company will likely post an operating loss when it reports its fiscal first quarter results on June 28.
Heins, formerly a little known chief operating officer at RIM, took over in January after RIM founder Mike Lazaridis and longtime executive Jim Balsillie stepped down as co-CEOs after the company lost tens of billions in market value.
RIM has tried to make phones with touchscreens that resemble the iPhone, but those offerings have largely flopped. And so has RIM's tablet, the PlayBook, which uses the very software that will be in the new BlackBerry 10 smartphones.

The company is following the same trajectory as struggling Finnish handset maker Nokia and California-based Palm, both of which attracted consumers with trend-setting phones and technologies in their heyday, only to be outmaneuvered by competitors. In Canada, there is fear that the nation's biggest technology company could go the way of former Canadian tech giant Nortel, which declared bankruptcy in 2009 and was picked over for its patents.
RIM was "the leader and this is what happens in the technology cycle of creation and destruction," Gillis said. "They rode the first wave of the smartphone revolution and Apple is riding the next one."

[Mr Bean]

Some of these personnel cuts are supposedly in R&D, yeah RIM is toast. It's been four years since they produced a smartphone with a real wow factor and every single phone version since then has been a story of packing in all the best features of phones made a year ago then trying to sell it for more than brand new Iphones or androids. To be fair the keyboards are still tricky to learn but great once mastered and they have been improving steady since the 8000s series disappointed but their App store is terrible and from survey's of smartphone users there is something like an 80% loss rate. IE Blackberry owners who buy a Blackberry only buy a new Blackberry when they upgrade or their old phone breaks 20% of the time. Without companys that force everyone to use Blackberrys for work they might lose another 2% of marketshare instantly.

But then there is a niche since Blackberry is still the only phone maker who can produce a Smartphone that plays nice with National security areas (IE won't allow outside connections, can't record anything) they still make a version of the 9930 specifically for government workers who want a smartphone but need to be able to disable lots of spy handy features.

[mr friendly guy]

I am hardly an avid consumer of the smart phone so I won't comment about their market share. However RIM seems to get mentioned in threads involving Apple, and how a company with products assembled in a developed nation still turns a profit. So naturally I thought this would be of interest to people.

[aerius]

This is what happens when your management just doesn't get it. The short version is they slept on the iPhone, then half-assed it when they realized it was killing them. Their thought process as far as I can tell is that they can depend on their government & business customers to keep them afloat, without realizing that the iPhone and other smartphones would take over their traditional customer base. They missed the wagon on it, went into denial, then tried to half-ass some rush solutions. There's a whole bunch of other stuff they need to do such as opening up their system to Android apps so they can start making inroads on the consumer market with their tablets right now and then use that to springboard their future phone & tablet products.

Bottom line is they made a bunch of bad business decisions and fucked up the execution, even if their products were made in China for $1 a pop they'd still be fucked and losing market share.

[Phantasee]

Aerius covered pretty much all of it. Complacency kills yet another giant.

[mr friendly guy]

So if its a problem with management, do they still get their golden handshake, er I mean parachute? Assuming of course they fail to turn things around.

[Mr Bean]

So if its a problem with management, do they still get their golden handshake, er I mean parachute? Assuming of course they fail to turn things around.

Correct, those CEO's and officers were hired for the most part when Blackberry was at it's height or during it's rise when they were the only game in town besides the Palm (Another not quite dead yet system) so the contracts signed when they were hired will be honored regardless of the fate of the company. You can see their officer list here Regardless they are all set for life as it is.

They are not finance geniuses so it's not like they will get sixteen million once they are let go for incompetence or anything.