Despite the fact that RIM’s stock is trading up, doesn’t negate the fact that the company is still in the crapper. Their BlackBerry 10 OS still hasn’t shown a “gotta have it” feature, developer support is so low that the company made a music video asking developers to make apps for their OS, which is still several months away from being launched. If RIM plans on competing for that “third” place spot, they’re going to be a few months behind Microsoft and Windows Phone 8, which is already gaining momentum thanks to strong interest in the Lumia 920 by Nokia and even the new Windows Phone 8X by HTC and is launching at the end of October, at least three month ahead of BB10.
With their OS aside, RIM may have “beaten” the street projections for the second quarter, but they still suffered a net loss of $235 million and are expecting another heavy loss in the third quarter. One can only assume with no new hardware in the fourth quarter, it’ll be more of the same.
I’m sorry if I’m not more optimistic about RIM’s future, but unlike other sites, I’m not getting fooled into thinking this company has a shot in hell to last in 2013. When their CEO, Thorsten Heins, referring to BlackBerry’s recent service outage, said it wasn’t a big deal and only affected four million people, I couldn’t believe my ears! Really, Heins? Four Million people don’t matter? This is why RIM continues to fail, they’re oblivious to the things that are happening around them. They sat idly by and let their competitors blast right past them, laughed off the threat from Apple and continued to produce hardware years behind their competitors. Now they are going to attempt to launch a new OS, in a market that already has three vying for the top spot, that offers nothing that consumers can’t already get on one of the more well-established platforms.
Good luck RIM, good luck.