beerbaron Posted November 20, 2011 Share Posted November 20, 2011 IMO what is happening is they realized their product wasn't competitive and wasn't selling, and that it was taking a lot of attention away internally from their core business in phones, so they're trying to exit that segment. I'm not sure of it, but the signs so far do point in that direction. I hope that's what they are doing. Usually delays occur because of lack of focus on the key projects. Playbook probably demanded a lot of resources internally. The only good point is that it will have given RIM a user base to test their new OS and develop their QNX 2.0. They are spread too thin in al their various business models. It's not a bad company/management tough, they did build the company from scratch. BeerBaron Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smazz Posted November 20, 2011 Share Posted November 20, 2011 Re: the razorblade analogy - are not apps, music, BES, Rimms version of razorblades? They can take more margin from developers, especially if they induce start ups in their growing markets. haha, you saved me finger tip skin Al, I had the same reply typed out before i re read your post. Amazon is giving their razor out for free - The Playbooks low short term pricing break is probably still not even free. In addition, you have the 32 and 64 G which goes up in multiples of 100s and we all KNOWWW that RIM does not pay hundreds for each of their memory units. Alot of people, going by the boards, seem to be opting for the larger memory units with the savings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
given2invest Posted November 21, 2011 Share Posted November 21, 2011 I checked out the playbook today in best buy - it is nicely done. Gets a while to get used to the UI but it is pretty good once you get used to it. The Palm analogy is apt. It's all about the aps and ecosystem. Playbook is DOA. But it's irrelevant to the RIMM story. Not sure there is a RIMM story but it's irrelevant. I just hope she holds 17.5 by Dec expiration. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ballinvarosig Investors Posted November 21, 2011 Share Posted November 21, 2011 Someone was asking how to define a value trap awhile back - RIM almost certainly has to rank as a particularly good example. Each time you looked at it in absolute terms, it looked cheap. Unfortunately, each time earnings were announced or guidance was provided, RIM have undershot the targets. Now, considering Wall Street analysis has been proven to be too optimistic (see James Montier), it must be going spectacularly wrong at RIM for them to fail to meet those optimistic numbers every single time. For once, Jim Cramer was proved completely right on this, the drop of market share in the North American market early this year was a sign of things to come for RIM. Until there are signs of stabilization, I think investors ought to stay away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smazz Posted November 21, 2011 Share Posted November 21, 2011 Playbooks selling out everywhere. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
given2invest Posted November 21, 2011 Share Posted November 21, 2011 So were HPQ's tablets. What's your point? haha. Sell something way below cost and people love it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted November 21, 2011 Share Posted November 21, 2011 So were HPQ's tablets. What's your point? haha. Sell something way below cost and people love it! I'd also be curious to know how big the inventories were. It's possible that they are just now finishing the first batches that were sent a while ago, and that they had little choice to discount them heavily because it's expensive to keep big inventories. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smazz Posted November 21, 2011 Share Posted November 21, 2011 So were HPQ's tablets. What's your point? haha. Sell something way below cost and people love it! if you cant see the point clean the glasses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Hester Posted November 21, 2011 Share Posted November 21, 2011 Someone was asking how to define a value trap awhile back - RIM almost certainly has to rank as a particularly good example. Each time you looked at it in absolute terms, it looked cheap. Unfortunately, each time earnings were announced or guidance was provided, RIM have undershot the targets. Now, considering Wall Street analysis has been proven to be too optimistic (see James Montier), it must be going spectacularly wrong at RIM for them to fail to meet those optimistic numbers every single time. For once, Jim Cramer was proved completely right on this, the drop of market share in the North American market early this year was a sign of things to come for RIM. Until there are signs of stabilization, I think investors ought to stay away. Completely agree, this thing was a value trap and maybe still is. The problem is that soon the market cap will be below a very conservative estimate of liquidation value. They will have a Net current asset value of over $10 next year barring no major acquisitions (probably the best reason the value trap could continue past when this is well below TBV). The Jan 13 $8, $10, and $13 are selling for a 10-19% return among the three. All of those, by expiration (when you factor in premium received) will be below or nearly below RIMM's NCAV most likely, again, barring no major acquisitions. That's giving no value to their patents or future profitibility if any. So buying this based off earnings or revenue has/will be a mistake, but this will soon become an asset play and any market share or positive earnings will be acceptable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AZ_Value Posted November 21, 2011 Share Posted November 21, 2011 Playbooks selling out everywhere. Yep. Probably at a loss though. This RIM thread definitely ranks high up there as far as teaching a person about investor psyche (LVLT would rank high also :D) RIMM is profitable and numbers aren't that bad at all. But the bulls here need to realize that there really is a fire behind the smoke. People aren't just talking BS when they say that the quality of their products sucks more and more compared to the competition. This coming from a Blackberry Torch owner and user. There isn't much of a contest between a phone like the Iphone and the current BB devices. They still have "some" moat around things like their enterprise services or even the BBM service for the younger generation, but I cannot tell you where those will be in 5 years. The devices themselves have fallen so far behind the rest it's starting to be scary; I own a Torch like I said and also an Ipod Touch, whenever I'm somewhere with access to Wi-Fi, I never (ever) use my BB to browse the internet for example, I prefer to use the Ipod Touch because the experience is much better; I guess I should add that this is IMO. So even though RIMM's numbers aren't bad I would advise against building into your buy thesis statements like "the new OS will do this..." or "QNX will do that..." because you just don't know!! Plus one has to be worried about the recent trends of repeated product launch delays, outages, and putting out a tablet PC like the Playbook that was almost unanimously decried as not being ready to be launched. Put frankly it sucked, if not it would have been selling out when it was launched and not when they dropped the price to $199. Plus I also agree that one should differentiate with Amazon, I bought the Kindle Fire but they also get my money through prime membership, they get a cut of movies I buy to watch on it, books I buy etc... If RIMM was to produce devices that are trully able to compete with the best out there then I could get excited but we're a few years in since the Iphone and others began their onslaught and RIMM is yet to show that it can respond. So I would also be worried about a value trap here where revenue numbers show you that there's some value but it somehow never materialises. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted November 22, 2011 Share Posted November 22, 2011 Looks like inventories were getting pretty high, doubling in 6 months: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/features/vox/rims-inventory-overhang-could-crimp-future-results/article2244022/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted November 29, 2011 Share Posted November 29, 2011 http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/11/rim-to-offer-its-mobile-device-management-software-on-andriod-ios.ars Research In Motion's executives have apparently decided that if they can't beat Apple and Google, they'll join them. The company announced today that it will offer its mobile device management and security software for iOS and Android devices, allowing enterprise customers to manage them alongside BlackBerry phones. The new software, BlackBerry Mobile Fusion, will provide many of the same central administration features now offered on RIM's own phone OS—including remote locking of devices and remote erasing of their storage, application and software management, security policy enforcement, and management of WiFi and VPN connections among them. The software will be available in the first quarter of 2012, according to a company statement. The move is an acknowledgement of the growing trend of companies adopting "bring your own device" policies to accommodate employees' desire to use their own smartphones and tablet devices in the enterprise, and of the iPad's dominance in the tablet space. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myth465 Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 Sounds like a death knell. Rim will shrink, and eventually shut down the hardware division similar to Palm and then will be acquired. Its a move in the right direction though and is something I thought they would do. Someone itching to get into services like HP should buy them. I dont think Google or Apple will be allowed to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ballinvarosig Investors Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 Apparently RIM are letting employees have Playbook's for $99 now. http://www.theverge.com/2011/11/28/2592163/rim-blackberry-playbook-99-employees-only-fire-sale/in/2341787 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 I had a chance to play with a Playbook recently. A friend of mine who's a software engineer was given one at a conference (for free! Guess it's a way to go through inventory). He wasn't impressed and I wasn't either. It takes forever to cold boot, and feels surprisingly thick in your hand even though it's smaller than the iPad. OS looks decent, but lack of native apps is a problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shalab Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 RIMM's recent moves to support iPhone and Android messaging over its network is a smart move - this will monetize RIMMs strengths better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 RIMM's recent moves to support iPhone and Android messaging over its network is a smart move - this will monetize RIMMs strengths better. It's not a bad decision per se, but I don't think it can be spun as a victory. Plan A was definitely to stay a dominant hardware maker and to only provide software & services for that platform to lock people in and give one more reason to pick RIM over competitors. That didn't work out so well, so now Plan B seems to be to support other devices. I'm sure there's a market there, but without total control of the hardware platform, the moat will be a lot smaller, and this means that there's now fewer reasons to buy RIM hardware. One possible scenario is for the company to shrink a lot and turn into a small software/service player, probably acquired by someone else. But I doubt, even in that form, that they could compete with the big integrated hardware+software makers because they can easily be undercut (if Google or Apple packages in RIM-like features for free into their devices, they'll still make money on the hardware and other services, but RIM will be screwed). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smazz Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 Some of you guys are really off the mark. Rim has been increasing their sales of Hardware globally - there are other players in this cummulative space now and the market is getting bigger. They dont have the same market share but still increasing their numbers. They ALSO have THE BEST security out there so they are generating ANOTHER revenue stream where none of the other players can touch them. This is a win win for them. This can also get them into markets they are not. "you want us to provide you security for crappy x y z phone to be used on your system? sure - its going to cost you X*? - what about buying our hardware and we will charge you X*?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 Rim has been increasing their sales of Hardware globally - there are other players in this cummulative space now and the market is getting bigger. They dont have the same market share but still increasing their numbers. Of course they are increasing their sales, the whole smartphone industry is exploding. If their sales were decreasing in the absolute, they'd already be dead. They ALSO have THE BEST security out there so they are generating ANOTHER revenue stream where none of the other players can touch them. This is a win win for them. This can also get them into markets they are not. They still have the best security, but they can definitely be touched. They used to have the best phones and best security, and now they just have the best security. The way things are headed, at some point, either having that won't be enough, or they won't even have that anymore. They could certainly turn things around, but so far they haven't shown much capacity to do that. "you want us to provide you security for crappy x y z phone to be used on your system? sure - its going to cost you X*? - what about buying our hardware and we will charge you X*?" Lol, yes, it's because non-RIM phones are 'crappy' and insecure that they are progressively taking over the business side after utterly dominating the consumer side... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smazz Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 yes, it's because non-RIM phones are 'crappy' we agree and insecure that they are progressively taking over the business side after utterly dominating the consumer side... yea,because we have been hearing that for some time from those obscure blogs you guys have been posting but still no proof. btw, thought you guys might like this pic i found. http://i40.tinypic.com/saxf75.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 Are you for real? :o Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smazz Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 Are you for real? :o you seriously never heard the term people use for an iphone? they say its basically an Ipod and cell phone with duct tape. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liberty Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 I don't doubt that all kinds of things are said by all kinds of people. The real question is: Is that your view? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smazz Posted November 30, 2011 Share Posted November 30, 2011 I don't doubt that all kinds of things are said by all kinds of people. The real question is: Is that your view? ask me that in the Apple thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myth465 Posted December 1, 2011 Share Posted December 1, 2011 Are you for real? :o Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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