Despite releasing a decent Blackberry smartphone as well as a tablet that is out selling everyone save iPad 2, investors do not seem to be pleased with RIM overall.
“We believe RIM has now squandered nearly every opportunity and competitive advantage it enjoyed through ineffective R&D resource management, delayed product launches and misreads of the competitive environment,†Morgan Stanley analyst Ehud Gelblum wrote in a note to clients on Friday. (Wall Street Journal)
While it’s still too early to write off the company as the next Titanic, if RIM doesn’t find a way to change their current state of affairs, they will end up suffering Nokia’s fate (who ditched their home grown OS MeeGo for Windows Phone 7).
Aside from reintroducing the world to Playbook on a much larger screen, RIM should seriously ponder slimming down the number of Blackberry devices down from dozens of models to simply two: one with a touchscreen, and the other with a physical keyboard.
Doing so would help reduce R&D for the company as well as focus their efforts on making a great phone upon two devices instead of spreading themselves thin over a few dozen.
RIM also needs to avoid embracing rival app stores, which will give developers yet another reason to avoid embracing Blackberry App World.
Hopefully RIM is able to regain their lost glory, as they are one of the few companies who can challenge iOS as well as Android in the enterprise market (and to a limited degree the consumer one as well).
Originally posted on June 13, 2011 @ 4:16 pm