Yesterday RIM stock fell to a four-year low, because — and I put this in quotes because it’s ridiculous — “observers weighed-in on the impact of Apple’s iMessage, the just-announced iOS 5 instant-messaging app that could steal (yet again) RIM’s thunder.” That’s a quote from a Cult of Mac article titled, Wall Street Agrees: Apple’s iMessage Will Kill Blackberry. Talk about a doozy.
Listen, I get that everyone’s really jacked up about WWDC and the announcements that were made on Monday, but to claim that a messaging application is going to kill off a phone company like RIM entirely is a little bit absurd. Sure, Research in Motion (RIM) is in a heap of trouble, but let’s not pretend that iMessage is the root cause for that destruction. RIM’s management and RIM’s recent stupid decisions are to blame, not iMessages.
iMessages is great, and the fact that it works seamlessly with SMS, 3G, and Wi-Fi is great. I’m not sure it’s going to be as successful as these Wall St. geniuses think it may be, but that’s an article for another day. RIM was in trouble before iMessage, and they’ll continue to be in trouble well into the future unless they get their stuff together in the short term.
People sold off their RIM stock because of RIM’s failure to keep up, and Apple’s, as well as others’, innovation in the sector. iMessages, which hasn’t even shipped to the public yet, may be the final straw that breaks the camel’s back, but rest assured, that camel was old and busted to begin with. That, and that alone, is why RIM is struggling at the stock exchange — failure after failure, not iMessages.
Article Via Cult of Mac
