
Research in Motion is in a tizzy. The recent first quarter earnings call showed a drop in net income, a projected drop in revenue of almost $1 billion, and the announcement of layoffs, sending the stock tumbling up to 20% in the aftermath. Furthermore, the PlayBook stats weren’t promising either as RIM reported that 500,000 units were shipped so far. That’s shipped, not sold. A third of that could easily be sitting around in the channel or on retail shelves. That’s not too bad when compared with Android’s Honeycomb tablets, which have had more retail time but only about 600,000 have been activated in the field. The silver lining to all of this is that international revenues were up 67%, year over year. However, we’ll get to how this is not necessarily a good thing later on.
Is RIM destined for failure? Will the BlackBerry brand end up being pawned off to some private investment group for peanuts? Can RIM ever get its mojo back? RIM may be bloodied and bruised, but it hasn’t been KO’d yet. Here’s how it can save itself. Continue reading “How to fix RIM”