After a rough day yesterday, RIM’s stock opened 10 percent lower today, trading at $10.05 at the opening bell. The stock price briefly recovered but it’s on a steady downward trend as of the writing of this post. If this slide continues, the stock is set to hit a low not seen since 2003.
Trading of RIM shares was halted for 15 minutes yesterday in order to issue a what the company called a “business update“. CEO Thorsten Heins detailed RIM’s recent challenges, and also explained that the company is employing the help of Royal Bank of Canada and J.P. Morgan to evaluate financial strategies. The company also warned that it will report a loss for the fiscal quarter ending on June 2. This came on the heels of report that states RIM is set to lay off a major chunk of its workforce. → Read More
Canadian smartphone manufacturer RIM has briefly ceased trading of their stock today in order to issue a “business update” from CEO Thorsten Heins to their stockholders.
Though the release takes the time to outline some of the company’s recent personnel changes, Heins also points out that the company has enlisted the services of both the Royal Bank of Canada and J.P. Morgan to help the company evaluate their financial strategies going forward.
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There goes another one — RIM announced today that Chief Legal Officer Karima Bawa will soon be leaving the company. This is RIM’s second major departure in as many weeks, with RIM sales head Patrick Spence leaving the ailing smartphone maker last Wednesday.
At the time, sources pointed to audio electronics company Sonos as his likely landing spot, though neither Spence nor Sonos have officially commented on the situation.
Unlike Spence, who reportedly jumped ship after being passed over for the company’s vacant COO spot (Sony Mobile EVP Kristian Tear eventually got the job), Bawa’s situation seems much less contentious. After spending nearly twelve years with the company (two of which were in her current spot), she’s finally looking to retire. → Read More
In one of the most anticlimactic (and likely ineffective) marketing campaigns in history, RIM has today launched its “Wake Up. Be Bold.” campaign in Australia. It began with a group of “protestors” disembarking from a bus outside of Apple’s Sydney store with signs that read “Wake Up.” But don’t get too excited — that’s the most exciting part of the story.
After the long and vigorous rivalry between Samsung and Apple, both in marketing and in the courts, the South Korea-based company was originally blamed for the seemingly out-of-the-blue protest. RIM, of course, kept quiet.
But it was in fact RIM that staged the shit show, which all culminated in the launch of the wakeupbebold.com website, wherein an Australian man explains how business has changed and that to be different you mustn’t just “think different,” but “do different” (which I’m fairly certain is grammatically incorrect), lest you end up “floating through life like a cork in a stream.” → Read More
At RIM’s keynote earlier this week, CEO Thorsten Heins unveiled a brand new camera app that will ship along with BlackBerry 10. It was quite impressive. It basically lets you snap a pic, select a subject’s face, and sift through frames captured before the moment you pressed the shutter button to make sure everyone looks their best. Perhaps the person on the left had a huge, wonderful smile while the person on the right was blinking. With the BB10 camera app, you will be able to fix that.
But the tech seemed awfully familiar. So familiar, in fact, that we had to do a little digging to satisfy our curiosity. Come to find that a company called Scalado, known for their super badass imaging tech like Remove and Rewind, actually invented this tech a while back. At the time we were unsure what the relationship between RIM and Scalado was, but RIM has since responded and clarified that this is, in fact, a licensing deal. → Read More
Just because the first day of BlackBerry World is over doesn’t mean we mobile geeks have run out of BlackBerry-related tidbits to pick apart.
Oh, far from it — in fact, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins took the stage (again) earlier today for a long-running chat with the press, and he has since outed a few juicy new details about the company’s strategy going forward.
First, let’s take a quick look at the things RIM won’t be doing, shall we?
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RIM is keeping the PlayBook party going. While speaking at a BlackBerry World breakfast with RIM CEO Thorsten Heins stated the company plans to launch an LTE-enabled PlayBook by the end of the year. However, the CEO didn’t detail the projected release date, price or available wireless carrier.
This is a smart move for RIM. Rather than spending the time and resources producing another tablet, RIM is instead concentrating efforts on making sure upcoming software works on existing hardware. During a recent trip Rim’s Waterloo campus, the company made it clear to TechCrunch that it is very much committed to bringing BlackBerry 10 to the PlayBook. → Read More
With the release of their BlackBerry 10 beta development tools and Dev Alpha devices earlier today, RIM has made it very clear that they want to build up as much developer love as possible before BlackBerry 10 officially launches.
Well, as it turns out, that’s not the only thing they’re doing to attract devs. Alec Saunders, RIM’s VP of Developer Relations, revealed at BlackBerry World that RIM will guarantee developers of quality apps a minimum of $10,000 in annual earnings — if developers come in under the $10K mark during their first year, RIM will actually pay them the difference. → Read More
Remember that retro time-defying camera app that RIM unveiled alongside a few other BB10 features? You should — it happened this morning.
Well, it would seem that the ability to search back through frames captured before the actual moment you pushed the shutter button has already been done. Nope, not by Apple. Not by Motorola, HTC, Samsung, or Nokia either.
It’s been done by Scalado, an imaging technology company known for their Remove and Rewind tech, among other things. → Read More
Even though we still don’t know when RIM will get around to launching it, CEO Thorsten Heins gave us a few brief glimpses at what BlackBerry 10 would be able to do during his keynote address at the BlackBerry World conference.
But what’s that? You missed the keynote? Well, just for you, here’s the video that Heins played during his time on stage that shows off what the company’s forthcoming mobile operating system could look like when it officially launches later this year.
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Today is BlackBerry Jam, RIM’s developer conference or WWDC equivalent. It’s RIM’s moment to redefine, rejuvenate, and re-establish itself in the world. Whether or not the company can pull it off, however, is an entirely different matter.
BlackBerry 10, RIM’s brand new platform, has been delayed, run into naming issues, and seen the transfer of power go from the company’s co-founders, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, to long-time employee Thorsten Heins. The conference will prove whether or not RIM is now adaptable — something for which the company has been publicly flogged for the past year.
We took a trip up to Waterloo to speak with some of the employees ahead of the event, namely Vivek Bhardwaj, Head of Software Portfolio EMEA for RIM, and as I walked away I felt less sure of who RIM is and what the company is about than I ever have before. → Read More
As it stands, most of BlackBerry 10 is still shrouded in mystery. Not even the Dev Alpha devices that will be made available to developers offer a glimpse of RIM’s new software — they’re running a modified version of the PlayBook OS instead.
All that said, RIM hopes to whet our appetites with glimpses at some of the nifty little touches that BlackBerry 10 will sport when it sees a widespread launch later this year. TechCrunch went to Waterloo and met with Vivek Bhardwaj, RIM’s Head of Software Portfolio, who took a few moments to give us one such sneak peek — an early look at BlackBerry 10′s keyboard, still a work in progress. → Read More
RIM has caught plenty of flack these past few months, thanks to (among other things) a multi-day global outage, disappointing PlayBook sales, and a dramatic management shake-up. Beyond all of this, the news that their next-generation BlackBerry 10 operating system wouldn’t see the light of day until the latter parts of 2012 seemed like yet another nail in RIM’s coffin.
But the beleaguered company is trying to move past all of that at BlackBerry World. While we regular folk still have months to wait until the first BB10 products make it to store shelves, RIM has just officially opened up the BlackBerry 10 platform to developers at BlackBerry World, starting with the release of their BB10 beta development toolkits and the BlackBerry 10 Developer Alpha device.
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Once perched atop the highest peaks of the smartphone market, Waterloo-based RIM recently found themselves at a crossroads: should they push ahead on the hardware front, or give it up in favor of their more lucrative network service business?
With the more “dictatorial” Heins at the helm, RIM has pointedly chosen the latter path, but a recent report from Reuters paints a picture of what could have been.
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The folks at RIM are no doubt devoting plenty of time and effort to their long-awaited BlackBerry 10 operating system, but they’ve found the time to whip up a few app updates to please the nearly 55 million BBM users out there.
First up on the list are a pair of newly-updated Facebook and Twitter apps — users will be able to share their sparkling wit with their BBM buddies from within each of the apps, ensuring none of their friends will be able to escape their ironic jabs and repartee. While RIM is smart to tie engagement with these two major social platforms into their own, they haven’t stopped there. → Read More
BlackBerry fans in India had best stay on the up-and-up lest they want to draw unwanted attention from the country’s security agencies. India Today reported over the weekend that the country’s government is on the verge of being able to capture messages sent though RIM’s formerly iron-clad BBM service.
Unnamed Indian officials were quick to point out to India Today that their forthcoming ability to capture and crack BBM messages will be used strictly on snoop on devices whose users are suspected of engaging in criminal or terrorist activity.
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The folks at RIM can see the writing on the wall — they’ve historically enjoyed plenty of enterprise love, but the recent “bring your own device” trend means headaches not only for RIM, but for the companies that have to manage all of them. In a move to hang on to relevance in the business market, the Waterloo company has officially released their Mobile Fusion device management platform, which aims to simplify how businesses manage a fleet of iOS, Android, and BlackBerry devices. → Read More
An errant tweet points us to the news that Research In Motion CEO Thorsten Heins is “clearing house” and “SVP/VP-level execs” are being fired. What does this mean? Hopefully a turnaround and, more cynically, an effort to reduce costs. Either way, RIM is changing.
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This just in folks: RIM has released their Q4 2012 earnings report, and it paints a pretty bleak portrait of the ailing company. RIM posted quarterly revenues of $4.2 billion, down 19% from the previous quarter, and down 25% from the year-ago quarter. The Waterloo company also reported a net loss of $125 million or $0.24 per share diluted in Q4, along with earnings per share of $0.80.
In the days leading up to the release, analysts expected earnings of $0.83 cents a share on revenue of $4.56 billion. → Read More
Once upon a time RIM was the shining star of Canada. Hailing from the Great White North, BlackBerry phones were the country’s dominant smartphone. But times have changed and RIM has not changed with them. That’s a recipe for failure and it seems that based on data compiled by IDC and Bloomberg, Apple shipped more phones in Canada last year than RIM. → Read More
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