Photo: RIM

How fickle you are, technology industry. One minute Research in Motion, the makers of the BlackBerry smartphones, was lambasted, and thought to be a giant in terminal, unstoppable, decline. The next minute pundits, analysts, tech writers, and even the investors who once jumped ship believe again. And, it appears, all it takes is a strong product launch.

On the comeback trail

After the successful launch of a slew of moderately- to well-received BlackBerry OS 7 devices, Research in Motion has seen its share price rise around 6 per cent on Tuesday, and nearly 50 per cent since hitting a five-year low on 8 August, according to Reuters. This comes in a year where the firm’s value dropped by more than a third, with industry opinion being that competitors Apple and the Google Android landscape had, irreversibly, eclipsed Research in Motion’s once unchallenged position as the smartphone maker.

Google Android self-destructing

A secondary component for RIM investor confidence is the impact Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility could have in the Android camp.

Collin Gillis, a tech analyst with BGC Partners in New York told Reuters that: ‘It’s all on the heels of Google/Motorola and what that means for the changing landscape, and there’s also a little bit of what I consider excess patent fever going on.’

Finally, bargain

The last component for the seemingly sudden RIM investor confidence is one part bargain-hunting, and, at a second level, a deep trust in RIM’s well-established name. Essentially, a firm this proven surely has a comeback in it – or so one believes – or has become an increasingly interesting takeover target, as others have speculated. Either way, Research in Motion is not dead by a long stretch, and investors are just the latest in a string of high profile industry players to vouch for the firm.

Let’s see.

Photo: ilamont.com / Flickr

One of the BlackBerry’s biggest problems in this new smartphone landscape has been fostering a relationship with developers. When compared to iOS, Android, and even Windows Phone 7, making apps for the BlackBerry has just not been that attractive to developers. Now, Mike Kirkup, the guy whose job it was to foster those relationships, has announced his resignation from the firm.

On to better things?

Mike Kirkup, who is RIM’s Senior Director of Global Developer Relations, announced his RIM resignation on his personal blog. Having spent a decade with the firm, Kirkup more than others would have been witness to the swift changing of guard in the smartphone game. His job – recruiting developers and evangelising making apps for the BlackBerry – in particular was strained, given iOS and Android apps are marching towards the million apps per platform mark, and Windows Phone 7 will soon eclipse Research in Motion, too.

In his post, the former RIM developer relations boss writes: ‘As the mobile space continues to change so quickly… this seems like a great time to step back and consider my next steps. If you wonder what I mean about the changing mobile landscape, just look at what has happened in the last two weeks – Motorola was acquired by Google, HP shut down webOS and Steve Jobs resigned as CEO from Apple.’ He, naturally, omits the parts about RIM’s struggles.

Love for the company

Mike Kirkup continues, writing: ‘Over my 10 year career I have worked with so many amazing individuals both inside RIM and in our broader developer community. This is a great company with leaders I respect and admire.’ Kirkup, like the rest of us, will likely be curious to see how RIM developer relations umm, develop, as well as how the company prepares for arguably the toughest fight in its history.

Suffice it to say, he got out before the real war started, which, given how intense this industry is, is probably a wise move if one values their health and would rather do without keeping-you-up-at-night stress levels.

Photo: BestBoyZ Germany / Flickr

RIM, the makers of BlackBerry smartphones and the BlackBerry Playbook tablet, have long prided themselves on having the most secure consumer mobile devices in the world. The company recently commissioned security experts to have a crack at its QNX mobile OS platform, with the experts having mostly positive feedback.

Reduced attack channels

QNX, which currently powers only the BlackBerry Playbook, and will soon power BlackBerry smartphones too, was given a shakedown by NGS Secure, who reported that the platform’s ‘attack surface’ had been reduced by a considerable degree. In its current state QNX runs the undocumented Neutrino 6.6 kernel.

In addition to the overall attack surface of the platform being reduced, NGS Secure said that applications were well sandboxed, since calls to developer subsystems were all run through the BlackBerry API layer, which itself is backed by user permissions and restricted files. This is particularly important, since applications can be a security weak point, irrespective of how strong the overall mobile OS is.

Slight concerns

It wasn’t all good for the RIM QNX mobile OS, though. NGS Secure spotted a slight flaw in the HDMI interface found on the BlackBerry Playbook tablet PC. Additionally the firm expressed concern the Playbook simulator that is used to test out applications didn’t seem to require a security certificate from RIM, stating the simulator was being used in ‘development mode’.

Not quite endorsed

Given the impressive general security of QNX coupled with the slight security flaws, NGS Secure counsels that ‘Organisations planning on introducing the PlayBook into their IT infrastructure should possibly consider waiting until further work has been published by the security community.’ They continued: ‘Our advice to any business looking at tablet technology, or indeed any new technologies, is not to rush into implementing them until all aspects have been proven.’

This recommendation seems sensible. If security is a major concern, let the tablet PC platform mature before deploying it at corporations.

Photo: BitchBuzz / Flickr

With Research in Motion pulling the curtains back on its 2011 lineup of phones yesterday, missing in action was the company’s next entry in its budget line of phones. Stephen Bates, who is RIM’s ULL chief, assured fans of the entry-level BlackBerry Curve 8520 and 9300 that the key demographic would be ‘subject to announcements later.’

We’re moving steadily

Speaking to TechRadar, Bates said: ‘We’re learning a lot about the market we’ve exploited with Curve; that range helped us open up new price points as well as services such as BBM and email.’ He added that ‘What’s interesting is the feedback we’re getting is once those people have become used to those services is they want to do more, and we see that group of customers as a great base for BlackBerry. So we intend to serve them very well at a future point.’

If I’m reading correctly into what he is saying, RIM UK Chief Stephen Bates suggests that users of the company’s entry-level phones in time upgrade to a better offering in the BlackBerry smartphones range or, alternatively, demand more services, which, for RIM, all equates to more revenue.

BlackBerry Messenger 6 a big deal

Other than announcing new BlackBerry smartphones, as well as speaking on the absence of a new BlackBerry Curve handset, Stephen Bates also spoke on the importance of BBM and how he expects BBM 6 will impact users. He says that the service will offer RIM’s user base ‘improved communications and a better social networking experience, more enhancements and better capability,’ but added that some functionality in the latest release will be handset-dependent, meaning the feature set won’t be homogenous across all BlackBerry smartphones like it was in the past.

Fighting for relevance

With the unveiling of all the new handsets sans a new BlackBerry Curve device, Research in Motion is clearly fighting for relevance. The company’s sales are on a downward curve, which is discouraging in the face of competitors like Apple, Samsung and HTC rising rapidly. It will be interesting to see if the new handsets will be enough to put RIM back on the rising tide, or if it will merely delay the inevitable crashing into rocks.

Photo: berrytokyo / Flickr

As RIM’s problems deepen, an executive at the company has said that the makers of the BlackBerry smartphone will release seven new devices running BlackBerry OS 7 in the coming months.

Testy meeting

The Guardian reported that co-CEO Jim Balsillie announced that the company was planning on releasing the new handsets into an increasingly tough operational environment for the company. The announcement was made at a tough annual meeting for RIM, where investors and analysts alike were curious to find out how the company plans on turning around its recent misfortune.

The comeback kids

Balsillie admitted that there had been delays in releasing BlackBerry OS 7, but he was confident that the new devices would help Research in Motion stay on track in meeting the financial guidance it gave for the year. Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis chalked this delay down to RIM’s efforts to get the upcoming BlackBerry smartphones in line with market expectations, claiming the tech in the latest BlackBerry Bold would jump an entire generation.

In the face of an ‘arms race’ with competitors, he said that ‘It may have delayed us, but we are going to come out ahead.’

Are you really going to come out ahead?

RIM had an atrocious first half of the year, but the company believes the second half of the year will be so good and sales of BlackBerry smartphones will be so strong that they will still meet their original forecast for 2011.

Either that’s complete hubris or the company knows something we don’t. In a post aptly titled ‘Why Is RIM So Confident About the Second Half of the Year?’ Ina Fried of All Things D wrote: ‘That Research In Motion has started to have a tougher time selling its BlackBerry is hardly a surprise. The real surprise in RIM’s earnings warning was the fact that the company somehow thinks the situation will turn around in the second half of the year.’

Citing a weakened position in mature markets like North America, coupled with struggles in emerging markets where a plethora of affordable Android devices are being released, it’s difficult to see where this rally will actually come from.

The bottom line, really, is BlackBerry OS 7 better be pretty spectacular. So spectacular, in fact, that it takes away from the momentum Android and iOS currently have, let alone the piece of the pie Microsoft is fighting for with Windows Phone 7.

Photo: overthinkingme / Flickr

Research in Motion has been hemorrhaging in handset sales, leading to an investor result that has seen the company’s share value drop more than 40 per cent this year as well. In a move to perhaps assure investors that not all is bad in BlackBerry land, the company sent out a tweet on Thursday announcing they have added more than 1 million subscribers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa in the last three weeks.

Unexpected breakdown

While giving a breakdown of sales per region used to be the company’s operational method, this has stopped. This unexpected announcement proved a rare update on a metric RIM stopped disclosing last year – subscriber numbers.

It’s unsurprising, though, since this appears to be a shining light in a sea of hurt for Research in Motion. The company’s BlackBerry smartphones have been desperately struggling to compete against Apple’s iPhone and an absolute onslaught of high quality handsets running on Google’s Android mobile OS overall, so to be able to pull out a metric that positive is only prudent.

Why subscriber numbers matter

Outside of having more mobile phone users in total, BlackBerry subscriber numbers are very significant to Research in Motion since it represents recurring income. The handset maker charges mobile network operators around the globe a monthly fee to allow BlackBerry users access to RIM’s own infrastructure, thus compressing and encrypting data before sending it on to other devices.

With this BlackBerry subscriber services revenue, RIM is able to have the second highest industry margins behind only Apple. Insofar as this stable subscriber growth outnumbers the number of users RIM is losing in other regions, especially North America, the company may be in for a bit of a comeback. Or it may not be – it’s really difficult to gauge just how long the woes at RIM will carry on for, especially if a new hit product isn’t announced soon.

Photo: ilamont.com / Flickr

Things at RIM are bad and while our minds can easily grasp the declining financials and falling sales of BlackBerry smartphones, we often overlook the human toll. Okay, sure, human toll may be too dramatic, but the people who work for the company are clearly carrying the weight of the struggles. An anonymous open letter from a RIM employee has revealed that the people within the company’s walls are feeling the strain, too.

We’re falling behind

While the letter from the RIM employee is best read in its entirety, we’ve pulled out the most interesting bits.

The first speaks to RIM’s growing pains. The employee writes: ‘We are in the middle of major “transition” and things have never been more chaotic. Almost every project is falling further and further behind schedule at a time when we absolutely must deliver great, solid products on time. We urge you to make bold decisions about our organisational structure, about our culture and most importantly our products.’

We must put the user first

Elsewhere the RIM employee suggests that the company needs to put user experience front and centre – something, we add, Google, Apple and Microsoft all understand. The letter reads: ‘Let’s start an internal innovation revival with teams focused on what users will love instead of chasing “feature parity” and feature differentiation for no good reason (Adobe Flash being a major example). When was the last time we pushed out a significant new experience or feature that wasn’t already on other platforms?’

Developers, developers, developers!

Finally, the RIM employee touches on what we believe is the great difference maker in the contemporary smartphone market. Developers. The letter reads: ‘We urgently need to invest like we never have before in becoming developer friendly. The return will be worth every cent. There is no polite way to say this, but it’s true – BlackBerry smartphone apps suck. Even PlayBook, with all its glorious power, looks like a Fisher Price toy with its Adobe AIR/Flash apps.’

This is all true

Authenticity aside, someone has, in one letter, distilled everything Research in Motion needs to do to get BlackBerry smartphones back to their winning best. It’ll take some time – and some doing – but it must be done. And it must be done with urgency.

Photo: BigBerries

While recent news on Research in Motion has been almost exclusively focused on how weak the company’s business is, with investors pounding the stock and others calling for a leadership change, the company hasn’t stopped engineering BlackBerry smartphones. The company’s next major release, the BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900, finally has a release window of sorts, with major retailers estimating when we’ll be able to purchase it.

This is a guess

Three and Carphone Warehouse both estimated that the BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900 would arrive this summer. Three has listed the handset to arrive in September, where the team at Carphone Warehouse are that little bit more optimistic, estimating the handset will see an August UK release date.

You need new product

Regardless of which of the two dates it is, Research in Motion may want to tighten up its development cycle and get this new model in the BlackBerry smartphones range to market. See, RIM has yet to release a single handset this year, with the company instead pouring all of its resources and shifting all of its dedication to the BlackBerry Playbook tablet PC.

Given that the Playbook didn’t do the kind of gangbuster numbers Research in Motion initially estimated it would, and sales of the rest of the product range in decline, the company has found itself in a very uncomfortable position, both with investors and in terms of its future in the smartphone business.

Nice handset

However, the BlackBerry Bold Touch 9900, which is a hybrid touchsreen and QWERTY keyboard device, shows promise, if not must-have status. Regardless, Research in Motion need to hunker down and get the next crop of BlackBerry smartphones into people’s hands. Moreover, one hopes their engineers are cooking up some real magic if the company wants to return to its fighting best.

Photo: Research In Motion

The situation at BlackBerry smartphones maker Research In Motion is evolving extremely fast. The company’s share price took an absolute pounding over the weekend dropping 20 per cent after the company missed its forecast. Now on the heels of job cuts at the company and rumours that the company may soon be acquired, RIM’s share price has shot up 10 per cent.

With shares in the company having dropped by more than 50 per cent for the year, and news of a possible implosion conflicting with news of an unlikely comeback, one can’t help but wonder how the company’s execs sleep at night.

Job cuts

Colin Gills, an analyst with BGC Partners out in New York told Reuters that RIM’s uptick in share price is a ‘classic bounce off the bottom’ case. He believes that the company’s decision to hand layoffs to an unspecified number of its 17,500 employees worldwide is a potential reason behind the unexpected bounce back in equity price. He said: ‘The talk was that they were starting to cut heads and if they can reduce costs faster than expected, that shows decisive action.’

The comeback, or the acquisition

Speaking to another analyst, John Jackson with CCS Insight in San Franscisco told Reuters that he believed the mobile devices market was still ripe for more M&A activity and that RIM could be a target. He said: ‘I absolutely think there’s a chance that RIM could turn it around and get back in there,’ but that was nicely balanced out with ‘I also think there’s a good chance that there’s a lot more M&A activity that’s going to happen in the market whether or not RIM is involved.’

A RIM Microsoft deal has been on the cards for some time now, many finance and technology experts believe. What matters most at present is that the sale of BlackBerry smartphones is on the decline and, unless Research In Motion can find a way to stabilise its affairs, this uptick could well-be short-lived. And, as a crude piece of surveying, will your next handset purchase be one of the BlackBerry smartphones on the market, or are you looking elsewhere?

Photo: cheukiecfu / Flickr

When it rains, it pours. There’s perhaps no greater phrase in the English language than that to describe what Research In Motion is experiencing. The company’s uninspiring product lineup has seen sales drop, leading to an investor exodus, stock price pounding, and even questions of the company’s leadership. Now, though, worse may have really come to worst, with BlackBerry developers also abandoning the platform now.

A Seesmic occurrence

In a blog post, popular social platform Seesmic has announced that it would stop developing its BlackBerry Twitter app from the end of June. Why? Well, because the company believes other mobile OS platforms are much more valuable than continued BlackBerry support.
They write: ‘Effective June 30th, Seesmic will discontinue support for Blackberry in order to focus development efforts on our most popular mobile platforms: Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7.

We encourage those affected by this change to try out Seesmic for Android, iOS and Windows Phone 7, as well as Seesmic Desktop and Web.’

It’s been coming

Firstly, take note that WP7 has risen above Research In Motion already. While Seesmic alone isn’t sufficient as evidence that BlackBerry developers are abandoning making apps for BlackBerry smartphones and the Playbook, there’s been anecdotal evidence elsewhere.

Matt Rosoff of Silicon Alley Insider reported on a panel he sat on at AppNation. He wrote: ‘When we polled the audience about which platforms they plan to concentrate on, iOS and Android were first and second. No surprise there. More surprisingly, there was almost no debate about number three: the mobile industry has accepted the idea that Microsoft will be a player.’

Speaking on Research In Motion, he wrote: ‘nobody was betting their future on it.’ He adds that ‘When I asked the audience “does anybody think RIM will still be around in 2015” the response was silence.’