RIM's BlackBerry Loses Top Spot to iPhone in its Home Canadian Market

I had a Blackberry for a while, I just couldn't get to grips with the horrible keyboard etc. They are still very popular in Asia though...A must have accessory for wealthy teenagers etc.

The iPhone is starting to creep up in that market too and the only way for RIM is down now. The iPhone is just so much easier to use.

thejadedmonkey said:

So many people on this forum are taking pleasure in what will eventually amount to a lot of job losses

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Completely agree with that statement.
What I find strange is though that all that hate were up voted as well as yours was upvoted.

Soo many dumb comments on this forum, iPhone and iPhones only, any other brand can go to hell, well if We all had iPhones it would be rather boring.
RIM might have lost it for now but I for one will wish them all the best on their way to recovery.
RIM still holds number 1 in quite a few countries and are by no means dead.
I for one hope that other brands will climb out of the ditch as well and have healthy competition instead of this iPhone domination.
I thought I would never say anything like this but quite frankly I get a bit fed up with people being just plain stupid.
Wish it was 2000 again, when they still made computers only.

KnightWRX said:

How does a stock being traded on a public stock exchange that is manipulated by media hype an indication of company health ? Last I checked, units sold, profits, everything is still in the green.

If anything, RIM is undervalued because some players in the media are making up these doom and gloom stories.

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Put your money where your post is, and support RIM. Buy stock. Then come back and tell us how good RIM is doing.

Jobs

thejadedmonkey said:

So many people on this forum are taking pleasure in what will eventually amount to a lot of job losses

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I agree with you here and I'm a big time Apple Fan. But I never like to see a good business go down especially when thousands of good jobs will be gone, as well as a competitor. We all know competition is what keeps our products getting better and keeping prices down! But I really hate to see people lose their jobs! I don't see RIM making it much longer and they really have themselves to blame, they really did not take the iPhone serious when first released! They actually were very arrogant and thought they would never lose big company business and never really have come out with anything impressive.

I remember laughing about when my brother got the so called "iPhone killer" BB Storm!(He now has a Droid to spite me but what's funny is he has an iPad and just bought the new iPad and of course loves them but I rode him so hard for so long about how much better iPhones are he's going to suffer just so he doesn't have admit I was so right) My thinking then when I checked it (Storm) out was, if this is the "iPhone killer" Apple had nothing to worry about! I've now watched there struggle and have seen first hand, friends in big business that were BB diehards have made the switch to iPhone and even some switching to Android based smart phones only to switch again to iOS! I've seen how some business' have had employee's using iPhone for personnel and BB's for work, only to put pressure on ther company's to make the switch! This is happening everyday across the country.

I'm a hardcore Apple person and have been for years, I love all my Apple products and enjoy them dearly! However I do not want to see a business like RIM go under and hope they figure it out and find a place to stay and keep the jobs and competition alive!!!

notjustjay said:

I was nearly laid off from my job last year, and if that had happened, I knew I would be most likely going to RIM or QNX. Many of my colleagues did, and I knew they were hiring like mad and working like crazy to get their stuff out the door. Many of my friends are working hard on projects they can't tell me about, but obviously PlayBook OS 2.0 and QNX-on-Blackberry were on that list.

RIM took too long, and Apple overtook them by surprise, yes. The sudden negative media coverage sure didn't help. And naturally people on the Apple forum look down on anything that's not Apple.

The problem is that good software takes a lot of time, and many people don't realize that. They see company A release a product and company B releases the same thing two months later and everyone says "B saw A's announcement and copied it!" without realizing how absurd that timeline sounds, how many months ago both companies must have been designing, developing, testing. The corollary is that people assume RIM is sitting on their hands watching iOS take over, when they're probably madly developing and testing.

I bet RIM has some real solid stuff in the works... let's just hope it gets released soon enough to turn things around.

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I think QNX is a profitable part of RIM. I don't know if QNXers considers themselves part of RIM or not.

And so true what you said about software development... Customers come to us thinking it is fast and easy. It's not that hard, it just takes time. And for mobile apps (iOS, Android), they think that if it is 0.99$ or free, then it must really must be easy. Things take time, period. /rant

If they were in the U.S. and failed they would just get a government bail-out.

jamesjoneslink said:

you don't know Blackberry? the mobile phone produced by the company are very nice ever. jsut like a small computer. but now apple has superseded its place.

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What is sarcasm?

Gooberton said:

Blackberry has absolutely no shot of return to the top, ever

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If Apple has taught us anything it is that a phoenix can rise from the ashes. SJ was unique in his generation, not in history.

sinsin07 said:

Put your money where your post is, and support RIM. Buy stock. Then come back and tell us how good RIM is doing.

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Buying stock does not help support RIM at all. What part of "the stock is not representative of the company's health" did you miss exactly ?

BB will continue to decline as the past two years of contracts expire, everyone i talk to with a BB hates it, me included. 4 more months and my pain will be over!

NoCleverSNForMe said:

Become the third major OS. Palm tried to be it, Microsoft has been struggling to get major marketshare...the answer is to become the third OS.

You don't need to be #1 in order to be successful or profitable. Look at Apple - incredibly profitable Macintosh line...yet marketshare has not been the goal. It was all about making great products at high margins.

BlackBerry OS 10 is a complete reboot of the BBOS - it doesn't look anything like previous BlackBerry phones. That is their last chance.

If they mess that up, then yes - I'm right there with you. But I want to wait and see what they've got up their sleeves. They need to do it before Windows Phone 8 comes out for sure...because God knows how much money Microsoft will put into the marketing for that this fall.

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Aren't they already the 3rd major OS? Problem solved!

But seriously, I hope BBOS 10 is great... if nothing else but to keep the BB faithful happy. Maybe it will slow the rate of people fleeing from the BB.

I doubt many people will go back to BB, though.

Actually wish they'd at least try to compete with android and iOS because competition means better products on all fronts.

Blackberry failed when they didn't take the iphone as a serious threat, instead they continued to make the same products as if there wasn't any competition.

KnightWRX said:

Buying stock does not help support RIM at all. What part of "the stock is not representative of the company's health" did you miss exactly ?

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Trying to brush off the declining stock prices as a non valid indicator of the company's worth only makes sense if the company has some unknown potential to really grow its business or has a steady income to make dividends to shareholders. RIM on the other hand saw both its revenue and profit decline in the past months. The profit is especially bothersome as it fell down really quickly:





Saying that RIM is still doing OK is like saying a plane is OK even though it's heading downwards. Unless there's a reason to believe RIM can pull itself up, the investors have the right to be skeptical which is reflected in its share value.

What's especially troubling is that RIM is really struggling to sell BlackBerrys in the developed countries. I know they keep telling us how well they are doing in Indonesia and other emerging markets but you really need high price markets to be competitive and stay healthy. Can RIM really make something special with the next OS10? Something so special that people will turn away from iPhones and Android and buy the new BlackBerrys over Windows Phones? I'm not so sure.

It seems even Canadians are flocking away from the RIM ecosystem and it's sad to see its demise but RIM has no one but themselves to blame.

fertilized-egg said:

Saying that RIM is still doing OK is like saying a plane is OK even though it's heading downwards.

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Bingo.

20,000 feet.... 15,000 feet... speed increasing... 10,000 feet... There goes the right wing...

smithrh said:

20,000 feet.... 15,000 feet... speed increasing... 10,000 feet... There goes the right wing...

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That sounds pretty ironic given that Canada's right wing Conservative government just announced the budget today, on the same day when RIM announced their disappointing financials ridden with loss.

It's unfortunate but both the Canadian government and RIM will start cutting their payroll.

RIM is really betting on their next OS but I personally just don't see how it'll change RIM's fortune when Playbook was a huge failure. We'll see.

RIM's Decline

aerok said:

Why did this get downvoted? The only loss Blackberry has been having is market share.

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RIM's decline is in its profits. Their average selling price per phone has declined because they had to lower prices dramatically to compete with iPhones and Android phones. Most of their sales growth is in poor regions of the world like Africa and Southeast Asia where very few people can afford to spend $300-400 per phone. RIM has had (what i beleive but not 100% sure) like 13 consecutive quarters of profit declines. If that trend is not reversed they will stop being profitable and start drawing down on their cash and after that is gone they'll be bankrupt.

It's funny, reading the current threads about "Apple stock", "Apple stale profits", etc.. even though Apple is showing growth, I'm reminded of this thread.

I wonder if the few posters who attacked me about RIM's troubles being born out of the media "doom and gloom" that eventually dragged the company down in the mind of consumers/investors will also happen to Apple.

A lot of RIM's issues didn't even begin within the company, only in media doom and gloom stories. Will Apple suffer the same fate ?

Funny how perception manipulation can drag down even healthy companies.