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RIM Manufacturing Partner Pulls the Plug On BlackBerry Phones
zacharye writes "Toronto-based original device manufacturer Celestica on Monday announced that it will stop producing hardware for struggling mobile device vendor Research In Motion. Celestica stated that it will wind down manufacturing services related to BlackBerry devices over the next three to six months, and it expects restructuring charges to be less than $35 million."
The rise and downfall of RIM parallel's slashdot, myspace and others in many ways.
The early leaders that never adapted and eventually get surpassed by better, smarter competitors. The desperate and late attempts to remain relevant only to just slowly fade into obscurity.
Really sad.
Are they the only manufacturer of Blackberry devices or are they just one of many?
From the article it sounds like RIM decided to drop them as a manufacturer. Maybe move to China, maybe move to Android or Windows based phones, maybe go bust. We'll see.
so this doesn't mean much.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The stick would be shaking and an artificial voice would be warning: "pull up, pull up".
Clearly the decline of RIM is at the hands of Microsoft, whose Innovative(tm) Windows Phone brings consumers all of the Innovative(tm) features they've been looking for; once they had a taste of Innovative(tm) Windows Phone(tm) there was no further demand for Blackberry.
It is rumored that Apple and Google also have products in this space but they are irrelevant.
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This is a precursor to the official announcement.
In 2008 a leading design analysis company (in stress, thermal and fluids) bought another leading design analysis company (in electronics). Combining their client lists they discovered RIM was the only fortune 100 (manufacturing) company that did not use their design analysis software. In retrospect it looks like they were not using any of their competitors either! Anyway finally that design analysis tool vendor probably got their goal of getting all fortune 100 manufacturers by kicking RIM out of that club!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Or rise and fall !! Or, erect and flacid !! Or hard and soft !!
Jump up and down in blue suede shoes !!
When you enter an unrecoverable flat spin to your impending doom, the answer is to eject (ideally with a golden parachute.)
Didn't save Goose tho.
Celestica grows tired of RIM jobs.
This headline is designed to give the impression that Celestica is dropping RIM rather then the other way around. This is about RIM moving manufacturing from one plant to another because it makes business sense and has implications with regard to the continued viability of the business model.
When will the American media stop bashing Canadian companies into the ground. RIM is sitting on a billion in cash and has no debt. Yes there sales and marketshare are slipping but you'd think that the company was about to go under any minute the way it's reported in the media. The fact is activesync may be good enough for consumers... It isn't good enough for all use cases and the primary use case for the blackberry is corporate/government communications where security, and archival communications logs are important. These are areas where android/iphone/winphone/facephone??? can't even make the grade for inclusion for an RFP let alone proceed to an RFQ stage. As for BEZ licensing... get a better carrier or better procurement team. We haven't paid for a BEZ license directly in a while. The carrier supplies it with the unlimited data plan.
I think you are talking about Nokia, not planes or RIM.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
"Hey, at least we're not Nokia!" :)
... if it were fast enough, had enough RAM (4G) and storage (32G), and had a fully open architecture ... and priced $1 each.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
They can pay new users to use their phones. They'll make up the lost revenue with increased volume!
This is a good thing for RIM, When Blackberry was synonymous with executive perk, they could afford to subsidize North American manufacturers. Now that they are more of a consumer product they need to manufacture where their competition does and that means Brazil and Southeast Asia.
Now that RIM has shed the executive team that waited too long before shifting them into a competitor for consumer devices, expect more changes that may not make sense at first. But it all comes together under the heading "Consumer Electronic Devices".
The problem with RIM is that they are not stressing their strenghts. One of them is BBM. It's still very popular with the kids around here.
The stupid way to go about this is releasing an iPhone app to do BBM. Why then buy a Blackberry (and follow-up purchases) if you can be part of the group with your iPhone? Stress it. BBM is Blackberry. If your friends are exchanging PINs and you don't have a Blackberry, you're out.
On the business side, it's a different story. Secure. Manageability. Proven. Trust.
If HP, Dell, etc. can manage to have a consumer-side and a business-side, why can't RIM?
I guess that means ...
*puts on shades* ...no more RIM jobs.
Haters gonna hate. Celestica aren't making enough money on RIM devices because of a combination of RIM missteps and FUD from Apple-zealots so they parted ways. I'd like to say the Bolds coming through my office have had stellar build quality but instead I'll just say I look forward to seeing what an alternative fabricator will produce.
Can anything stop the all conquering iPad?"
Like it or not, the iPad is a fad. Most people buy it because it's a visually pleasing piece of hardware. Some state their two year old picked it up and "learned it in two minutes!". News for you people: Any kid who can pick their nose and wipe it on their pants has just learned how to pick an icon and swipe the screen. It's not rocket science. Your kid's not a genius. Apple isn't magic.
These "trends" in hardware and software go away after awhile. Everyone used to piss themselves like an overly-excited puppy whenever the latest version of Windows would draw nigh. That went on for about 20 years until Vista. People started moving to alternatives. The iPad will go the same way because the exact same functionality can be had for half the price or less. You can already see Apple getting worried with all of their legal wrangling with the Galaxy III.
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