Yearly Archive: 2010

Financial results announced yesterday show a healthy disregard for all the ghoulish speculation about Research In Motion. Revenue during the last three months was up 31 per cent while earnings per share rose 76 per cent. There are now more than 50 million BlackBerry users, up 56 per cent year-over-year. And all this during an economic downturn that has confounded many companies. To be sure, BlackBerry has lost some market share. In the increasingly competitive U.S. BlackBerry was down two points, but so was Apple. Droid, in third place, jumped five points. For investors, it’s been a good week. Share...

A lot has happened in the world of Research In Motion since my book was published six months ago. Share price is down 38 per cent and some analysts, particularly in the U.S., have gone sour on the stock. The BlackBerry Torch seems to be selling well, but the iPhone 4 may be selling better. Several governments, including India, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, have been holding RIM hostage trying to gain access to encrypted email messages for security purposes. All of this reminds me of the bitter patent battle in 2005-2006 when it appeared RIM was finished...

Just back from a week’s holiday in Nova Scotia. Ate lobster daily, unlike the Globe and Mail’s Ian Brown who spent the summer writing about food across Canada, came to Nova Scotia, and declared he would eat no lobster. We managed to miss not only Hurricane Earl but also the blessing of the BlackBerrys by Rev. Lisa Vaughan of St. Timothy’s Anglican Church in Hatchet Lake. “I think they traditionally used to call it Plough Monday, where people used to bring their farming equipment and tools to the church to be blessed,” she told the Halifax Chronicle-Herald. “Most of us...

Cantech Letter has done a fun item called “7 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About the BlackBerry.” My favorite is: “In the third quarter of 2009 RIM added 4.4 million subscribers, a number equal to the population of Ireland.” Here’s the link.

Economists have it easy. When they make a prediction about some exotic marker like GDP growth or inflation, they can keep revising their numbers as time passes so they look good in the end. The same is not the case when it comes to talking about technology. Take my post on May 17, BlackPad Bunkum, where I went to some lengths to say that Research In Motion couldn’t possibly have a competitor to iPad on the way because co-CEO Mike Lazaridis had said he’d never do it. The size of the current BlackBerry was just fine with him. Moreover, touchscreen...

And they are generally positive for the new BlackBerry Torch. Walter S. Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal says it’s “a big improvement … closer to its newer rivals.” As for the speculation that the future of Research In Motion is behind it, he says “RIM is hardly dead or dying.” His main complaint is that there are too few apps. For Dushan Batrovic of Dundee Capital Markets the apps are not important. “We have downloaded a total of 10-15 apps on our iPhone and rarely use any of them. Perhaps there are some perfect apps out there but we...

A friend has written to me, saying: For modesty and security reasons, Saudi  Arabia and the Gulf States have ruled that all BlackBerry users must dress their BlackBerrys in tiny Niqabs and veils.

An announcement by officials in Saudi Arabia about “positive developments” means that BlackBerry service will continue uninterrupted in that country. While Research In Motion has yet to comment, it would appear that there’s a deal in the works allowing some kind of official access to messages. Pardon me for thinking this thought, but I wonder how much of this issue has been about brinksmanship on the part of the Saudi government. This whole imbroglio is reminiscent of the patent battle in the U.S. with its threat of an injunction against RIM in 2006. The timing of the Saudi move was...

I haven’t held the BlackBerry Torch 9800 yet. Neither have very many others. Even fewer outsiders have tested the device, just launched yesterday, for anything like the week necessary to comment. But that doesn’t seem to stop analysts, bloggers and mere passers-by from pronouncing on the latest offering from Research In Motion. It’s a double but not a home run, said the Toronto Star. “RIM failed to deliver the kind of quantum leap it needed to fend off the competitive threats from Apple and Android,” said a note from Goldman Sachs. Such commentary sounds like the Woody Allen line about...

Monday morning I’m on CBC’s national affairs show The Current in debate with blogger and investor Eric Jackson about the future of Research In Motion. Jackson describes RIM as GRIM. As far as he’s concerned, RIM’s best days are behind it and the company hasn’t kept up with the competition. The announcement by RIM and AT&T expected in New York on Tuesday does not impress this gloomster. If the “slider” that’s expected is anything like the photos that have leaked, then the device will be a dud, he says. Oh, BTW, Jackson is shorting the stock. I don’t much like...

lobal

Great review by Roopinder Singh in The Tribune of India. Here’s the link.

Nice piece in yesterday’s Halifax Chronicle-Herald on my new book. Here’s the link.

Just received my copy of the British edition of BlackBerry: The Inside Story of Research in Motion. Published last month by Aurum Press, it is a handsome product with a cover slightly altered from the version available in Canada and the United States. Aurum used a photo of a different model of the BlackBerry and made some of the words “pop” nicely on the front cover and the spine. On the outside back cover, they replaced the photo of the co-CEOs, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, with a generic shot of a young person lying on the ground with backpack...

Everything was in white for the Queen’s visit to Research In Motion yesterday: a white lab coat for the 30-minute plant tour on the aptly named Phillip Street and white gloves on Her Majesty’s hands to receive the white BlackBerry given as a gift. Even the Porter Airlines aircraft that flew Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip to the local airport was white. The Queen was welcomed by thousands of local residents, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and other politicians, as well as Mike Lazaridis, RIM co-CEO and co-founder, who invited his parents, Dorothy and Mike, to the occasion. The Queen even...