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RIM Struggles Continue

Posted by Soulskill on from the faltering-blackberry-crop dept.

dave562 writes with news of continued difficulties for Research in Motion, who yesterday announced a drop in profits, product delays and layoffs, causing their stock to plunge over 20%. "Why did RIM experience delays? Because RIM recognized that the current hardware wasn't cutting it, and had to upgrade to more powerful chipsets, co-chief executive Mike Lazaridis said. The first will be the BlackBerry Bold 9900 that RIM recently showed off." An article at the Wall Street Journal speculates that the company needs to be taken over or broken apart. "RIM’s operating system could be an intriguing purchase for Hewlett-Packard, which now owns the lovely but unpopular Palm operating system for smart phones. Handset makers like Motorola might be lured to buy The Astonishing Tribe, a Swedish company RIM recently bought that designs snazzy interfaces for smart phones. Patent companies, Google or other tech companies could scoop up QNX, the software company behind the PlayBook tablet computer, and RIM’s BBM messaging platform."

4 of 197 comments (clear)

  1. RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Early leaders in their respective fields, but then got lazy because they didn't think their customers would go anywhere.

    Then technologies and features got old and stale, and by the time they realized it, it could never catch up again.

    These days, both RIM and slashdot are pretty much doing a slow drain around the bowl. Sad, because you remember what once was, and what could have been.

    1. Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot by jawtheshark · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Pray tell me where I can get the intelligent (or at least semi-intelligent) discussions we used to have on slashdot in the olden days? I partially blame the fact that slashdot has become less interesting because I learned so much from it. Once you assimilated some knowledge, it becomes less interesting even though it gets featured again on slashdot.

      True, slashdot has changed, the audience most likely has changed too. I still wait for a place "better" than slashdot and I'll be glad to get some links.

      Compared to so many other sites, the intellectual level here in slashdot is astonishingly high. Go read the comments on youtube or yahoo answers sometimes. If you hate the spelling and grammar mistakes here and people who can't discern college and collage, or weather and whether, then you'll puke your guts out on every other site out there.

      --
      Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
    2. Re:RIM Reminds Me Of Slashdot by cyber-vandal · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I've been visiting this site since 1998 and have yet to find somewhere else where so many comments are well thought out and rational. I don't think there's too many places on the net where you could have this level of conversation. Kuro5hin used to be good but 9/11 turned its members into rednecks pretty much overnight. It has its flaws, the Javascript bugs being the most annoying, but it was my first internet forum and I doubt I'll stop visiting any time soon.

  2. Re:RIM is still golden by errandum · · Score: 3, Interesting

    When they had a superior product they were on top. They failed to realize the threat the iPhone presented, and Google saw the potential of touch interfaces and joined the race on time.

    RIM thought they were untouchable and when they decided to move it was a rushed response that came too late.

    The only salvation I see for RIM is to embrace Android.

    Port the encryption and infrastructure, along with the marvelous keyboards they make to Android and I'm sure they'll survive. Or even grow. Nothing is stopping them from trying and remember that they could even skin android to look like a blackberry. But it'd run aps and have an awesome browser and all the google utilities...