Research in Motion has finally hired a law firm to find a solution for restructuring plans to sort out the company’s assets, seek joint ventures and licensing patents. The struggling smartphone maker is working hard to turn the tables and find ways to boost its market share through the new BlackBerry 10 operating system. Sources report that RIM was optimistic at one point in time of generating $4 billion in revenue solely from deals with national level carriers in the United States. Another source was quoted as saying that this was a mature strategy and that RIM was in fact deeply involved in talks with major carriers. These structuring plans have been proposed to stem the losses incurred by Apple’s iPhone series and Google’s Android platform.
RIM registered a massive loss totalling $125 million in the first quarter of 2012. To add to its woes, the Playbook has failed to rescue the drowning company. The company’s stock has dipped 75% in the past 12 months and has resulted in giving the company a market value of less than $7 billion.
Representatives of the law firm Milbank as well as BlackBerry have refused to comment on the latest developments. Over the past several months, many investment banks have approached RIM in hope of playing role of financial advisers for BlackBerry. However, analysts believe the company will not hire a banker unless it plans to sell away a major part of the company’s assets or in case it receives takeover interest from its industry competitors. Recently, it was reported that RIM had in fact hired two unnamed investment banks for the purpose of evaluating the company’s future course of action.
Before he stepped down from his post as co-CEO of the company, Jim Balsillie proposed and led a three-pronged-plan which was aimed at doubling the service revenue of the company by allowing carriers to use its services for messaging, delivery of content and analytics.
These plans were touted as quite feasible by Balsillie, who said that they would appeal to carriers by allowing them to lure mid-budget customers to upgrade to smartphones by providing plans limited to social networking and messaging. One of Balsillie’s plans also included introduction of a ‘carrier cloud’ quite similar to Apple’s iCloud and other services like DropBox. After his plans were rejected by the carriers, Balsillie stepped down from the post in March.
RIM is clearly now rethinking its strategy and recent reports regarding the hiring of two investment banks and now a law firm in order to decide the future direction of the country indicate that the company is leaving no stone unturned to find a way out of its current mess. Whether it is not too late already remains to be seen.
