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Tag: RIM deathwatch

  • BlackBerry Ditched by U.S. National Transportation Safety Board

    The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is looking to replace all of its BlackBerry devices with iPhone 5’s. The agency posted a notice to the Federal Business Opportunities website seeking firms that can handle the the transfer of the agency’s devices.

    The NTSB stated that the switch away from BlackBerry was due to the devices “failing both at inopportune times and at an unacceptable rate.” From the agency’s justification document:

    The NTSB requires effective, reliable and stable communication capabilities to carry-out its primary investigative mission and to ensure employee safety in remote locations

    The agency is contracted with Verizon Wireless to provide it with wireless service, and it currently deploys some iPads to employees. It’s decision to use the iPhone 5 instead of Android devices came partly because of that the iPad use:

    The iPhone 5 has been determined to be the only device that meets the dual requirement of availability from the existing wireless vendor and is currently supportable by existing staff resources. The NTSB also anticipates the benefit of synching of the iPad devices and the iPhone devices, allowing users to seamlessly transition between the use of multiple platforms while retaining the same applications and capabilities.

    Research in Motion (RIM) has been losing large enterprise clients at a disturbing rate this fall. In September, Yahoo announced it would be giving free high-end smartphones – but not BlackBerrys – to its employees. Government contracter Booz Allen announced last month that it’s 25,000 employees will be transferred to Android or iPhone devices, and the U.S. Department of Defense is looking to hire a contractor to manage hundreds of thousands of Android and Apple devices.

    RIM is currently hanging its hopes of revitalizing its business on the January 30 launch of its new BlackBerry 10 platform. Analysts, however, are not convinced the new OS and devices will be enough to bring the company back to the dominance it enjoyed five years ago.

    (Via AllThingsD)

  • RIM Not Worth Buying or Splitting Up, Says Analyst

    Although RIM impressed investors by not losing quite as much money this past quarter as was predicted, the company is still hemorrhaging its U.S. smartphone market share to Apple and Google and losing money. The company is banking its fortunes on its upcoming BlackBerry 10 OS, but the software and accompanying phones won’t hit store shelves until next year, well after the holiday shopping season. RIM has resorted to desperate measures to string developers along until then.

    Today, All Things D is quoting a Credit Suisse analyst as saying RIM isn’t even in good enough shape to be bought or to spin off its divisions. The All Things D report quotes Kulbinder Garcha:

    “Any deal for [the] company is highly complex in our view, requiring simultaneous management of a declining business, as well significant restructuring, and as such an acquirer maybe be best advised to wait for [the company] to shrink meaningfully before making any potential move,” Garcha theorized, adding that he’s not sure there’s anyone out there who could turn RIM into a winning play.

    Garcha followed up by saying a sell-off of RIM’s various assets might not go well either. He questions the quality of RIM’s patent portfolio and states that RIM’s network operations center would be costly to convert for other operating systems. Garcha estimates RIM’s global smartphone share will decline to 2.5% next year.

  • Windows Phone to Overtake BlackBerry by Thanksgiving

    While Windows Phone OS appears to be gaining a little traction in the smartphone market, BlackBerry OS usage is taking a nosedive, and has been for some time. A report by WMPoweruser, an independent Windows Phone enthusiast community, this weekend estimated that Windows Phone will overtake BlackBerry OS usage by the end of November. This conclusion is based on StatCounter data from the beginning of 2012 that was extrapolated.

    RIM’s fascinating and ongoing struggles are mostly to blame for this shift at the bottom of the smartphone market. Still, Microsoft shouldn’t be overlooked for the small, yet steady, growth Windows Phone has seen throughout 2012.

    While RIM has been delaying its new BlackBerry 10 product launch, Microsoft has been iteratively improving the Windows Phones OS. With the help of Nokia’s Lumia 900, reviews of a Windows Phone finally rivaled those of an iPhone or high-end Android device. A report this summer stated that Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Phone 8 could be the most developer-friendly smartphone OS on the market.

    Unfortunately for RIM and Microsoft, the quality or timeliness of either BlackBerry 10 or Windows Phone 8 aren’t likely to matter much this fall. The schadenfreude people feel toward RIM and the “little smartphone OS that could” story beginning to surround Windows Phone will be drowned out by the oncoming rush of iPhone 5 fever. Just today, Apple became the most valuable publicly-traded stock in U.S. history. Just it’s iPhone-related sales now eclipse the entirety of Microsoft.

    Samsung is making progress at consolidating Android fans and customers who haven’t jumped on the Apple hype bandwagon, but still can’t match the sales that Apple is seeing. The fact remains Windows Phone, no matter how well designed, has years of steady growth to go before it could hope to be a real force in the smartphone market. Sadly for RIM, it doesn’t appear that BlackBerry 10 will come in time to make any impact at all.

    (Graph courtesy WMPoweruser)
    (via BGR)