Making fun of RIM and saying “neener neener” to their considerable financial issues is pretty low-hanging fruit for tech journalists (one of them, apparently, being me) but it’s hard not to wince when yet another story about RIM’s misfortunes breaks. Today, we hear about RIM’s stock taking a 10 percent (now trading at $10.05) dive after they released what they call a “business update.” Trading was halted for 15 minutes as CEO Thorsten Heins spoke about their position in the business sector, also informing the world that they’ll be getting help from Royal Bank of Canada and J.P. Morgan to get their finances in order. Heins also let it be known that RIM will be announcing a loss when quarterly earning reports are released on June 2nd.
RIM announced recently that they’ll be laying off as many as 6,000 employees (out of 16,500) while, at the same time, VP of Global Sales Patrick Spence left the company last week. This spate of bad news comes after a long, dry season of swings-and-misses, including the departure of two CEOs and tragically disappointing sales for the BlackBerry PlayBook — the device upon which RIM more or less bet the farm. Their next Hail Mary attempt to regain relevance and create a presence in the market will be in the form of the BlackBerry 10 (projected for late 2012), which has largely failed to spark the sort of consumer excitement enjoyed by Apple or Samsung.
If RIM is planning to pull a rabbit from a hat and blow everyone’s mind, this would be a good time to yank it out. A company can only coast on fumes for so long.
Source: Techcrunch