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Lenovo Could Take Over RIM
judgecorp writes "China's Lenovo could take over RIM, according to Lenovo chief financial officer Wong Mai Ming, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland. The Canadian authorities might object, and so might BlackBerry users, after what ultimately happened to the ThinkPad brand under Lenovo's guidance. Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said, 'It’s something that we would look carefully at. We always look at foreign investment in Canada as a cause for reflection. We have to look at intelligence concerns.'"
Yeah, I'm a bit curious about this too. I've had two Thinkpads since the purchase and both have been as good of quality as when it was IBM.
You are incorrect. RIM has positive cash flow, no debt, and significant capital assets and cash. RIM is far from dead and with their new offerings have continued opportunity to grow.
Another thing to consider - RIM is still has the only FIPS compliant smart phone on the market. That means that any government agency that needs to send "secret" data to remote agents will almost certainly use this device set.
I work at an ASP for Lenovo, and if you're talking about their 'Think' branded stuff... the part fulfillment is still handled by IBM. The same ASPs are providing support. There are the same if not more warranty options as before. Perhaps you are talking about call centers? I've talked to them and they don't seem any worse or better than any other big brand OEM call center. Not sure how anything is 'way worse' - sounds like your perspective.
I expected things to get worse, and was somewhat surprised when they didn't.
Does China have some sort of late-1990s nostalgia thing going on that I haven't heard of?
-- My Weblog.
The way I understand it is that while RIM is struggling in North America, they're still pretty dominant in the rest of the world. And the rest of the world is still a pretty big market.
I had a discussion at work with a mapping vendor. They were involved with discussions on mobile device support. From what he had seen, the survival of RIM to this point and beyond was related to the way they play ball with the government in regards to encryption compared to other companies. Apparently, Apple flat out said no.
So what happened to Thinkpads after Lenovo purchased it?
I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T430. I find it to be a very good laptop.
I have only 1 problem with it.
There are tons of programs it comes preinstalled with
- Evernote
- Intel AppUp(SM) center
- Intel WiDi
- Intel Control Center
- Intel Management Engine Components
- Intel OpenCL SDK
- ThinkVantage Communication Utlity
and lot more stuff. But I think lot of extra software shipped even when this was from IBM.
If someone could publish a list of stuff which could be uninstalled, it would be great.
RIM has positive cash flow, no debt, and significant capital assets and cash
RIM has had an operating loss for the last 4 straight quarters. While you are correct that the company isn't on financial life support (yet), their prospects are not looking especially cheery. Their cash hoard is around $3 billion which while substantial is tiny compared to Google, Apple, Microsoft and Samsung. All their major competitors have extremely strong balance sheets, far stronger than RIM. It's a bit like playing poker when everyone at the table has a much larger pile of chips. You still can win but the odds are not in your favor.
RIM is far from dead and with their new offerings have continued opportunity to grow.
The sales numbers for RIM's products are do not back you up. Competing products from Apple and Android makers are in far higher demand. RIM's product line is pretty widely considered to be not competitive. While RIM might succeed yet with some brilliant new products, there is little evidence so far that we should expect anything that will put them ahead of the curve.
Another thing to consider - RIM is still has the only FIPS compliant smart phone on the market.
Which is something that the majority of the market could not care less about. At best it gives them some breathing room for a little while. But the number of people who really need that level of security is a pretty small fraction of the overall market. RIM needs a product offering with much broader appeal and significant advantages over the competition. Right now this is a battle they are losing and losing badly.