In the wake of a global recession and sharp stock drop, these kind of reports can be great news for RIM. New market research conducted by Globo has reported that 65% of European business users aren’t ready to replace their handsets ‘just to have access to emails’, despite almost half of the sample (47%) stating a desire for Internet access via their mobile phone.
“Our research has found that a mobile device’s ‘look and feel’ ranks high in the selection process, and emotion is high on the agenda too,” commented Costis Papadimitrakopoulos, Founder and CEO of Globo. “We also know that for every person who would queue to be the first with the latest gadget, there is also another who wouldn’t change their service provider for anything.
Globo’s research found that just 8.6% were interested in the technical aspects, capabilities and functionality of a mobile device, while the majority were simply concerned about the handset’s user-interface, price, its battery life and network coverage.
RIM will be releasing their Q2 financial report tomorrow, and you can expect full coverage on BlackBerry Cool. However, that doesn’t mean financial analysts can’t all make predictions today as to how RIM will perform tomorrow. SeekingAlpha has pulled together a great round up on what happened to RIM in Q2 and what Q3 should bring.
Although the company’s prospects are riding high with the release of its 3G BlackBerry Bold device and the recent announcement of the consumer-friendly BlackBerry Pearl Flip, RIM shares are trading about 50% below the 52-week high it reached back on June 19. The stock was changing hands at just above the C$101.50 mark at 11:30 am E.T.
Furthermore, analysts are expressing concern about how much impact the current financial crisis will have on RIM. They’re also worried about the delay in launching the BlackBerry Bold in the U.S., the company’s largest market.
Despite that rather grim perspective, many analysts remain hopeful that Q3 will be a big one for RIM.
One of the surprises of CTIA last week was the stealth announcement of the Sprint-Nextel BlackBerry 8350i for their oft-neglected iDEN network — if I remember correctly, the last iDEN BlackBerry was the 7100i (ugh). One of the major reasons Sprint has been hemorrhaging subscribers recently is a lack of quality devices, and the release of a sleek BlackBerry to satisfy their nearly 10 million iDEN subscribers could help stop the bleeding.
However, analyst Craig Moffett of Sanford C. Bernstein doesn’t share my rosy outlook, mostly because of the current economic and wireless climate: in short, wireless subscriber growth is slowing, which doesn’t bode well for Sprint-Nextel picking up lost ground. Here’s a question: would anyone jump to Nextel because of the BlackBerry 8350i?
Great news for RIM came from technology analyst Gartner today, who are reporting that RIM has raised their smartphone market share to 17.4 percent, roughly double last year’s numbers. In addition, RIM sold 5.6 million smartphones from April to June, far surpasing the 2.5 million sold during this period last year. Where is all this growth coming from? RIM’s newfound consumer demographic.
“RIM continued to execute well at the consumer level, increasing its global market reach,” Gartner analyst Roberta Cozza said in a statement.
A recent report from Analysys is claiming that European adoption of dual-mode UMA handsets, like the BlackBerry 8820 or the upcoming BlackBerry 8120, is low due to complicated set-up and relative ease of implementing separate land-line and mobile services. UMA handoff, which lets your Wi-Fi pick up voice traffic from your mobile when you’re in range, has been equated to fixed-mobile convergence in general, but this report argues that bundled pricing and shared marketing for mobile and fixed voice services is a more effective way of bringing the two technologies together.
A recent ABI Research report is forecasting huge progress for Linux as the OS of choice for smartphones, claiming 31% of smartphones will be running it by 2012 thanks to a compound annual growth rate of 74%. Both Nokia and Palm have been flirting with Linux adoption for awhile. In fact, being more of an open product was one of the key changes Palm needed to embrace, according to a certain open letter. The report just goes to show that doing so early will get them on board with developers. Now, the BlackBerry’s fairly closed in terms of its OS and odds are it’s going to stay that way. How much of a lead could open source adoption give Palm over RIM?
The National Post is reporting that financial analysts are pitching RIM’s stock is set to hit the $275 ballpark in the next six to ten months. Considering it was sitting at around $68.58 one short year ago, that’s quite the forecast. RIM’s been keeping momentum up on the stock market however, with analysts Sera Kim and Adam Low predicting a doubling of BlackBerry users to 23 million by the end of the 2009 fiscal year. There’s plenty of new devices to look forward to, and an ever-growing smartphone market willing to gobble them up. Are there any game-changers on the radar for the next six to ten months that could throw a wrench into these predictions?
ABI’s fed the big companies into its newfangled Vendor Matrix, which one imagines as some giant machine that churns and bubbles and whizzes and clunks along until it dings a little bell and spits out a result, and has put Nokia at the top, with Motorola in second and RIM in third. After listening to a friend in the UK gushing about his new Nokia N95 this morning, it’s no surprise that Nokia’s on top. Criteria for ranking is based on performance in innovation and implementation of products.
In terms of implementation, Nokia has captured 56% of the global smartphone market, which is where they’ve really succeeded since RIM, Motorola and Sony Ericsson have all matched Nokia’s innovation score. While these reports need to be taken with a grain of salt, ABI’s standards are fairly comprehensive. Check the criteria behind the jump.
With all the legal troubles that Qualcomm has been embroiled in lately, it was a bit of a suprise to still see the big Q at the top of the list of mobile chipset suppliers for Q2 2007 (Qualcomm had overtaken Texas Instruments for the number 1 spot last quarter). Then we remembered that, until things change, Qualcomm is still in every CDMA BlackBerry (as well as pretty much everything else CDMA). Accordingly, analyst iSuppli agreed with us:
“Qualcomm took the top spot on the strength of healthy growth in EvDO and WCDMA baseband chips,” said Francis Sideco, senior analyst, wireless communications, for iSuppli. “This achievement caps a sustained period of gains for Qualcomm.
While this is good news for Qualcomm, it should be noted that Texas Instruments reported a big upswing during its mid-quarter update, possibly related to customer fears over Qualcomm’s future.
(With Thought asking the best question of the week already in his editorial, it seemed best to make this the Weekly Contest. Whomever posts the best comment will receive 3 free games (!) from Bplay. LAST WEEK’S WINNER was JEF, who thinks Wi-Fi could be a win-win for everybody. ed.)
Interesting report coming from financial analysts the Motley Fool today. It seems that the Fool’s investor community has given a 1-star CAP rating to the boys and girls at RIM. This is despite the fact that RIMM is currently being traded at 222 USD, well above their 3-month high, and recently posted a ‘knock one out of the park’ quarter.
Most of the Fool’s concern seems to be based around the iPhone and other devices encroaching upon BlackBerry market share. I think these are completely valid concerns. However, for a company that has continuously met or beaten expectations, aren’t we shortchanging RIM a bit here? It’s possible that RIM’s stock is overvalued, and it’s true that no company can be bullish forever, but have we seen any indication at all that RIM’s slipping? I don’t think so. Maybe this is what Jim Cramer meant when he talked about pushing down RIM’s reputation in order to make mad money.
Check out Fool analyst Matt Koppenheffer’s analysis after the jump, and post a comment to let us know if you think analysts are giving RIM a raw deal.
Great news for RIM came from technology analyst Gartner today, who are reporting that RIM has raised their smartphone market share to 17.4 percent, roughly double last year’s numbers. In addition, RIM sold 5.6 million smartphones from April to June, far surpasing the 2.5 million sold during this period last year. Where is all this growth coming from? RIM’s newfound consumer demographic.
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The National Post is reporting that financial analysts are pitching RIM’s stock is set to hit the $275 ballpark in the next six to ten months. Considering it was sitting at around $68.58 one short year ago, that’s quite the forecast. RIM’s been keeping momentum up on the stock market however, with analysts Sera Kim and Adam Low predicting a doubling of BlackBerry users to 23 million by the end of the 2009 fiscal year. There’s plenty of new devices to look forward to, and an ever-growing smartphone market willing to gobble them up. Are there any game-changers on the radar for the next six to ten months that could throw a wrench into these predictions?
ABI’s fed the big companies into its newfangled Vendor Matrix, which one imagines as some giant machine that churns and bubbles and whizzes and clunks along until it dings a little bell and spits out a result, and has put 
With all the legal troubles that 
Interesting report coming from financial analysts the 
