Blackberry maker RIM falters. The company’s new smart phones shipments are postponed to next year and again this quarter there are less smart phones. Microsoft says that RIM has been contacted.

Research In Motion presented Thursday night the results for the quarter that ended June 2.

In the past three months, the company only had 7.8 million smart phones to ship. The previous quarter there were 11.1 million. For years, the number has not fallen below 10 million. blackberry

The shipped 7.8 million Blackberries meant a decrease of 41 percent compared with a year ago when RIM still was able to ship 13.2 million smart phones. The past three months theyalso shipped only 260,000 Play Books.

 

Not rosy

RIM declined in the most recent quarter and is now deep in the red. They expect 5000 jobs will be lost and RIM suffered a net loss of $ 518 million, while last year they had a profit of $ 695 million that was recorded. Sales fell by 33 percent to $ 2.8 billion.

The prospects are not rosy. Blackberry’s new software is scheduled to come out in late 2012. The expectation was that this would happen before the holidays. RIM, however, has made it known that the devices are delayed until the first quarter of 2013.

The development of the units is expected to be more difficult than expected. CEO Thorsten Heins calls the 10-Blackberry smart phones the ‘priority.’

 

Competition

The coming months, when it comes to the older Blackberry devices, probably little can get out. The latest model, the Blackberry 9900 is from September 2011.

HTC recently launched the One X and Samsung is high in the Galaxy S III. In October a new iPhone is also expected around that time, as are the new Windows Phone devices expected to arrive on the market.

 

Microsoft

The Blackberry Maker is now deeply into the strategic opportunities for the company. Reuters Friday found out that based on three anonymous sources, they could report that the company stands for two choices. The pressure from the board of directors is expected to be considerably increased.

In recent months, according to RIM the sources were approached by Microsoft. One of the two options is also to make use of the Windows Phone, like Nokia. This option was not preferred because Microsoft probably has purchased a large percentage of shares and RIM would lose its independence.

 

Network

The other option is that RIM’s network operations could disconnect the hardware side of the business. In this way, the special network that Blackberries use could be opened to others. They must then pay to access it here.

The disadvantage of this option is that the loose hardware of the company without the network activity has little future value, according to Reuters.

 

Value

The shares of RIM dropped after the presentation of the quarterly figures by 18 percent. The market value of the company is now at $ 4.1 billion. That’s about 70 percent less than a year ago.

 

RIM’s stock price at a new low

It would mean a turnaround must for Research In Motion, the troubled manufacturer of BlackBerry devices: BlackBerry World resented its new BlackBerry OS 10. This BlackBerry would again be a formidable competitor for the iPhone and Android platform. Investors are not, however, convinced.

The introduction of the brand new BlackBerry OS 10, has done the share price of Research In Motion little good. On the contrary, the share price fell during the three days of the BlackBerry World event by about 15 percent yesterday and even got to under $ 12. This puts the shares at the lowest level in eight years.

BlackBerry OS 10 is the expected rescue for the ailing manufacturer. The operating system is completely updated and the first developer sets up completely on touch input, so as to better compete with the iPhone and Android phones. In response to the fall, CEO Thorsten Heins emphasized today that Research In Motion will take no leave of BlackBerry devices with a physical keyboard.

 

Samsung still has no interest in BlackBerry 10

Research In Motion still seems to hope that Samsung BlackBerry will be interested in 10, the new OS from the manufacturer of BlackBerry. But again, Samsung shows at no interest. The rumors went around that Samsung is already in talks with RIM about the licensing of BlackBerry 10, but Samsung says that these rumors are nonsense. Last week, an analyst had the news that Samsung would be able to license the software, but the company says that it has its own path to go where there is no RIM.

The message of Samsung is hard for RIM since any future negotiations on the runway is now final. Samsung is already working together with Intel to design their own OS, OS Tyzen. They are also already active in the market with Bada. The adoption of another OS would not be a smart move for Samsung. Furthermore, they do not actually need a different platform, since they already have the popular Android operating system.

 

Trusting on Blackberry 10 OS to succeed

With RIM, everything seems to go up on the success of the BlackBerry 10 OS and new devices equipped with this going to be like the recently announced 4G variant of the playbook. The company is engaged in a major reorganization to regain its financial health and has also started a number of acquired companies to sell. Among other things, Newbay will be sold now that cloud services are available to 80 million members. The Irish service users can upload and share a variety of content on smart phones, tablets and computers. The company was sold about a year ago for an € 81 million takeover, but now it is back from the sale and has a few other services.

This forms part of the plan of the new CEO Thorsten Heins to get the company back on track. This will particularly depend upon the success of the BlackBerry operating system 10 in a difficult market with heavy competition. If this also fails, there remains little else than likely the company will be divided and sold.

Two unnamed analysts from IBM have announced an independent panel of the Royal Bank of Canada and JPMorgan asked what the possible consequences would be of an acquisition of RIM. IBM has a serious interest in the manufacturer of the BlackBerry and especially in the enterprise division that focuses on the business market. An acquisition like this especially makes sense if the RIM BlackBerry 10 OS was not hard hitting enough. This will force RIM to look at other options and to consider a possible split of the company and it will also provide a significant drop in share prices, making the acquisition by IBM a lot cheaper. The current value of RIM is currently estimated at about two billion Euros.

According to rumors or talk with HTC RIM, they also want to talk about the licensing of the software. HTC has still not mentioned in the media, so it may well be that they will also come up with an explanation. Negotiations with Sony for a while now are shattered.