BlackBerry Service backlogged really bad since Monday but has just hit the U.S. today. Read more on the following link to really see how far this really traveled: http://www.rim.com/newsroom/service-updates.html
RIM Boosts Drive to Lure More BlackBerry
SAN FRANCISCO—Alec Saunders was hired by Research in Motion Ltd. in August with a daunting mandate: Make the BlackBerry as cool for apps designers as the iPhone.
For more than a year, RIM has been ramping up efforts to woo top developers in order to make more apps—the games and other mobile tools that have revolutionized the smartphone market—available on its BlackBerry.
![[RIMDEV]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_s0BYpbYel2zdnrPPOs80hzkNelk2aPvaM_EJom8ECxANiNhQM8oCLA6Dj9GQglVucI4D4qXk652u_ACuPb5lHzSPDNLygi-O_E1pHi7OUVcZZU7ldVjvaakSVXbGaHHgLcq6jLXRJIK67kb5uohoKSbjg=s0-d)
Reuters Alec Saunders is bulking up RIM's developer-relations staff.
Stung by fast-slipping market share in the U.S., the company is now going into overdrive. Mr. Saunders, RIM's new vice president for developer relations, said the company has boosted his group's budget, and is now bulking up its developer-relations staff in places such as Silicon Valley and New York. He made his first hire in California last week.
He is also prowling for staff in developing markets, such as India and Indonesia, where the BlackBerry still enjoys a big and growing market. The new hiring is a big step for a company that has long relied on an ecosystem of small developers that have grown up around RIM's headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario.
Last week, RIM unveiled its new operating system, BBX. It is based on QNX, a powerful operating system the company acquired last year. QNX already powers RIM's PlayBook tablet computer, and BBX will soon run RIM's next-generation BlackBerry, due out next year. Crucially for RIM's apps push, BBX will allow users to run Android apps on RIM devices, boosting the company's relatively paltry apps library.
Google Inc.'s Android is now the most widely used smartphone operating system in North America. It boasts more than 250,000 apps. Apple Inc.'s iOS has more than 500,000. By comparison, RIM says it has more than 46,000 apps.
Apps developers have long complained that RIM hasn't made it easy for them, which is part of the reason RIM has lagged behind. Earlier this year, RIM removed some bureaucracy involved in the design process.
But with iOS and Android dominating the market, RIM's BBX remains a hard sell. RIM'S network outage earlier this month also capped a series of stumbles this year—including delayed product launches and poor PlayBook sales—that have clouded the company's future. And it doesn't help that there is still no timeline for the rollout of the new BBX-powered BlackBerrys.
"It doesn't matter how much they improve the tooling or the promotion...if the market opportunity is being decimated by the competition," said Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin.
RIM's share of the key U.S. smartphone market had fallen to 11.6% as of the end of June, according to research firm IDC. That put RIM's BlackBerry in third place behind Android-powered phones and the Apple iPhone. Five years ago, RIM had 48% of the U.S. market.
Mr. Saunders, 47 years old, is a veteran of Microsoft Corp. and worked for a time at the company that built QNX, before RIM bought it. He left an Ottawa start-up to join RIM this summer. He succeeds two executives from RIM's developer-relations team, Tyler Lessard and Mike Kirkup, who left the company earlier this year.
Mr. Saunders said he isn't worried about the timeline for the BBX phone.
"At some point, we're going to ship a new phone," he said. "My job will be successful if people look at that new phone and say, 'Boy, the applications I want are on that phone.' "
He declined to detail how much money he has to spend, except to say his budget is "an order of magnitude larger than previous budgets."
At the end of a three-day RIM developer conference here, some designers still came away disappointed. The big let-down: Executives spent little time talking about plans for the BBX phones.
On Tuesday, RIM Co-Chief Executive Mike Lazaridis spent most of his keynote address unveiling new tools for RIM's PlayBook. Some of those tools impressed the developers, including a so-called cascades feature that allows users to expand and shrink visual displays of data.
After his presentation, Mr. Lazaridis met with developers privately. During these meetings several developers expressed frustration with RIM's slow transition to BBX and its lack of support for developers in the past, according to people present. But they also said they were heartened that Mr. Lazaridis was more expansive regarding his vision for BBX than during his public appearance.
Mr. Saunders acknowledged past shortcomings. Developer relations at RIM had occurred "in a very haphazard kind of way," he said, adding that the situation has now changed.
Some developers left the San Francisco conference encouraged. "For developers, this is a step in the right direction," said Michael Russo, the chief technical officer at Toronto-based Polar Mobile, which does work with RIM. "Alec impresses me a lot."
Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Research in Motion: Another Analyst Bails, Stock Bounces
Research in Motion is jumping today, catching a ride with the broader tech market, despite another Wall Street analyst bailing on it.
GMP Securities analysts cut their rating on RIM to “reduce,” (i.e., “sell”), taking the number of Wall Street analysts with a “sell” rating on the stock to 14 out of 49, according to FactSet’s database.
GMP acknowledges that “It is not…easy to sell a stock when it is down sharply.” Indeed, the stock is down 67% from its peak in February.
But GMP says it doesn’t hold out much hope for improvement any time soon:
RIM is working on a new core operating system for handsets which RIM has said are due in “early 2012.” New devices were not shown at last week’s developer’s conference and we are worried that RIM could face a product gap of several months. To our understanding, handsets based on the new operating system (QNX, now rebranded as BBX) are likely to be shown at the Mobile World Congress show in February, but could ship by May, 2012 or later. We think this creates a risk of another year of product delays and lower earnings.
Inventory at RIM has spiked in the past six months to $1.4b, up $725mm YoY. We think that RIM had initial plans to sell between 4-7mm PlayBooks in its first year and so far shipments of 700,000 have fallen far short. We think there is risk of inventory write-offs. Additionally we think there is risk that some of RIM’s contractual obligations to suppliers could also result in charges. This off-balance sheet item stands at $7.9B, up $1.5b from a year ago.
Our discussions with several carriers, distributors and developers around the world suggest to us that BlackBerry is becoming less relevant. Microsoft’s alliance with Nokia appears to be gaining the confidence of carriers as a third smartphone platform after Apple’s iOS and Google. The recent BlackBerry network outages were seen as a significant issue. stands at $7.9B, up $1.5b from a year ago.
Based on a weak track record in the past three years, our perception of product delays and declining support from carriers, we doubt that RIM can restore the confidence of customers and investors. We substantially reduced our forecasts for BlackBerry shipments and earnings in F2013. RIM’s valuation is low and well below peers, with shares trading at 6x C2011 EPS vs. peers at 14x. This may attract value investors, activist shareholders and potential takeover talk. Our target of US$18.00 is based on 5 times F2013 EPS of $3.58. REDUCE.
Research in Motion shares were up more than 2% at last check to $23.30, but still not far from their 7-year low of just over $20, set in early October.
RIM More Open to Rivals
BlackBerry Maker's New Mobile-Management
Research In Motion Ltd. is rolling out a new system that aims to help its corporate customers keep track of employees' BlackBerrys as well as rival devices they use, including the iPhone.
The move—the BlackBerry maker's first to incorporate competitors' products—is a tacit acknowledgment by RIM's executives that their once-undisputed grip on the corporate smartphone market is loosening. It is also a bid by the company to take advantage of the new diversity of work-related devices by grabbing a piece of the growing market for so-called mobile-device management services.
Employees are increasingly convincing their company's chief technology officer to allow them to dump their BlackBerry, replacing it at work with a wide range of smartphones—from AppleGoogle Inc.'s Android operating system. Inc.'s iPhone to devices running
That has been a logistics and security headache for many corporate technology departments. A number of smaller companies have started devising software that allows companies to more easily manage—and provide consistent security for—all those different devices. RIM is now jumping into that niche.
"The world has changed, and there are very few one-device shops anymore," said Jack Gold, principal analyst at J Gold Associates.
RIM is expected Tuesday to unveil BlackBerry Mobile Fusion—a software system that will allow companies to integrate a number of competing devices and operating systems into their corporate mobile ecosystem. It will incorporate some of the security features long offered by RIM, including the ability to remotely lock and wipe data from lost phones.
The system aims to let tech departments better manage company-wide connectivity options and install applications and software updates, no matter what kind of smartphone the firms' employees are using.
RIM said the software will be compatible with its current BlackBerry operating system, along with BBX, a new OS that will be used by both its next-generation BlackBerry—due out next year—and its PlayBook tablet. The software will also be compatible with the iPhone and iPad, as well as devices that run off Android, RIM said. "Our customers have been saying, 'We're moving to these different adoption models, and we'd like you on board with that,'" said Alan Panezic, RIM's vice president for enterprise product management, in an interview.
The service, expected to be rolled out early next year, is the culmination of an acquisition RIM made earlier this year of Munich-based mobile-security company ubitexx. Other companies, like Toronto-based Fixmo Inc.—which has partnered with U.S. government agencies to remotely secure smartphones—offer similar services.
"There are dozens of little companies offering bits and pieces" of mobile security, RIM's Mr. Panezic said.
The service is also a fresh push by RIM into services and software, an often-overlooked side of its business. That has been a bright spot for analysts, many of whom have soured on the company's broader prospects as it continues to bleed smartphone market share to rivals.
Services and software accounted for more than 25% of RIM's revenue last quarter. Scotia Capital analyst Gus Papageorgiou wrote in a research note Monday that investors, who have sold down RIM shares sharply this year, are largely overlooking the steady cash generation of RIM's services business.
The move—the BlackBerry maker's first to incorporate competitors' products—is a tacit acknowledgment by RIM's executives that their once-undisputed grip on the corporate smartphone market is loosening. It is also a bid by the company to take advantage of the new diversity of work-related devices by grabbing a piece of the growing market for so-called mobile-device management services.
Employees are increasingly convincing their company's chief technology officer to allow them to dump their BlackBerry, replacing it at work with a wide range of smartphones—from AppleGoogle Inc.'s Android operating system. Inc.'s iPhone to devices running
That has been a logistics and security headache for many corporate technology departments. A number of smaller companies have started devising software that allows companies to more easily manage—and provide consistent security for—all those different devices. RIM is now jumping into that niche.
"The world has changed, and there are very few one-device shops anymore," said Jack Gold, principal analyst at J Gold Associates.
RIM is expected Tuesday to unveil BlackBerry Mobile Fusion—a software system that will allow companies to integrate a number of competing devices and operating systems into their corporate mobile ecosystem. It will incorporate some of the security features long offered by RIM, including the ability to remotely lock and wipe data from lost phones.
The system aims to let tech departments better manage company-wide connectivity options and install applications and software updates, no matter what kind of smartphone the firms' employees are using.
RIM said the software will be compatible with its current BlackBerry operating system, along with BBX, a new OS that will be used by both its next-generation BlackBerry—due out next year—and its PlayBook tablet. The software will also be compatible with the iPhone and iPad, as well as devices that run off Android, RIM said. "Our customers have been saying, 'We're moving to these different adoption models, and we'd like you on board with that,'" said Alan Panezic, RIM's vice president for enterprise product management, in an interview.
The service, expected to be rolled out early next year, is the culmination of an acquisition RIM made earlier this year of Munich-based mobile-security company ubitexx. Other companies, like Toronto-based Fixmo Inc.—which has partnered with U.S. government agencies to remotely secure smartphones—offer similar services.
"There are dozens of little companies offering bits and pieces" of mobile security, RIM's Mr. Panezic said.
The service is also a fresh push by RIM into services and software, an often-overlooked side of its business. That has been a bright spot for analysts, many of whom have soured on the company's broader prospects as it continues to bleed smartphone market share to rivals.
Services and software accounted for more than 25% of RIM's revenue last quarter. Scotia Capital analyst Gus Papageorgiou wrote in a research note Monday that investors, who have sold down RIM shares sharply this year, are largely overlooking the steady cash generation of RIM's services business.
