Comments on: RIM is Screwed Says Dan Frommer, We Agree

By: David H

David H — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 07:34:28 +0000

I think RIM’s biggest problem is perception. They appear to be going down the same road as palm, who also once dominated the smart phone market. I haven’t personally tried out the Storm or Storm 2 but I can tell you neither have generated the kind of excitement they should have. I agree that the web browsing experience on the BlackBerry is pathetic and years behind where other platforms are. That being said, BlackBerry’s are still the phone of business professionals. While this is good news for RIM, if they don’t successfully develop new offerings that excite the end user they will quickly find themselves trying to dig themselves out of a hole much like palm has been doing for the past three years.
Here’s for hoping RIM isn’t developing something along the lines of palms folio and will soon be coming out with a device we can all be excited about.

By: Joe Powell

Joe Powell — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 04:29:23 +0000

There are so many opinions floating out there on the future of RIM’s products, and growth in phones. It is so hard to decide who is right.

All I know is that Blackberry made a very astute decision in past years to start on a big time scale international sales. They could see the nature of competition in North America. Even at best, if they just focused on North America, that would eventually just flatten out, similar to what Coca Cola and Pepsi have seen with their cola wars in the USA.

It is all about international penetration and sales, to get crackberry addicts.

According to RIM’s March 31 conference call, they are now up to 48% of international sales. In reality, that is just the tip of the iceberg.

I would love to see them boast eventually that they are up to 60% and beyond on sales internationally, with some 550 phone carriers as they mentioned yesterday.

It is smart to get those customers ASAP, as they have done, along with in due time, adding new technology and phone features.

Meanwhile, Blackberry aggressively has gone out to capture on an international basis foreign govt workers and foreign corporations, to get on board with Blackberry enterprise systems.

All of that revenue then leads to investment in factories, more sales, innovations, acquisitions, and a huge war chest of money. Right now, RIM has no debt. They have $5 in cash for each share of stock outstanding—not bad at all.

Yeah we all want to be device improvements, styles, features, OS and browser, which will come along.

But, first, I like all that money they are making.

Right now, they will make about $5.50 per share for F2011. Not many companies can boast that kind of EPS.

Before you all pass judgement, it is money that counts, and Blackberry has a lot of it.

By: Sam K

Sam K — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 02:31:58 +0000

The original Storm (with the software updates) and the Storm2 are not a joke. I have both of them. I’m tired of people bashing the Storm, especially if they haven’t used it or only used the original Storm when it first came out. RIM dramatically improved the original Storm after software version 4.7.0.148 was released 6 months after the phone came out and the Storm2 was great right out of the box. Typing on the Storm is so much better than typing on an iPhone. I’ll bet I can type much faster on the SureType keyboard on my Storm2 than any iPhone user. As far as App World being a ghost town, that’s ridiculous. Obviously no platform has as many apps as the iPhone but Blackberry has plenty of good apps. There are also 3rd party app stores like MobiHand that also sell plenty of Blackberry apps. I want Dan Frommer to tell me exactly what apps he wants for the Blackberry that he can’t find.