Much to RIM’s dismay; their shares have plunged by 15 percent ever since their Blackberry World Conference in Orlando. Ironically, RIM had also given out prototype phones of Blackberry 10 to developers in the same conference, which will be launched later this year. The company’s share price fell to a new low of $11.92 on Thursday.
Earlier in 2008 in the middle of June when the Blackberry Bold 9000 was introduced, the company’s stock fetched $145. However, when the phone was ultimately launched, the stock fell to $67 and then to $40. Similarly, this time too, RIM is in a state of crisis and is solely responsible for it. Though the financial markets in US were more than willing to give RIM a chance, their own investors seem to have lost faith in the company.
The drop in stock price started immediately after RIM introduced the BlackBerry 10 software. Alpha versions of the phone were handed out for free to developers to push them into writing better apps for the new Blackberry 10 platform. New features of the OS were unveiled which included a novel system of notifications to access emails or BBM messages while simultaneously staying connected to another task. The smartphone’s camera boasts of a new ‘time travel’ feature that allows a user to utilize an image stored by the software prior to taking a picture, helping you replace an undesirable part of the bigger picture, taking care of instances when you manage to shut your eyes just as the snap is clicked.
All that aside, RIM’s main troubles lies in the misunderstanding that the Alpha version of the Blackberry 10 software is the final Blackberry 10 smartphone which will be sold to consumers. However, the features of the Alpha version which have been reviewed are supposedly nowhere close to what the final version of the phone will consist of once the software has been finalized. In fact, the OS on the Alpha devices is a modified version of the Playbook 2.0 software, which is based on QNX.
Investors and consumers are seeking assurance that this upcoming smartphone will not disappoint them like Blackberry Storm did, despite the company’s promises. They are expecting RIM to introduce features that Android and iOS users are offered, like Adobe Flash or a camera on the front and excellent hardware. Though RIM may have initially relied on their success with secure email technology and BBM, recent events seemed to have convinced the management that something more drastic is required if the freefall is to be arrested.
May 7, 2012 at 10:45 am
Interesting to note that you talk about misunderstandings but you yourself have misunderstood the situation.
1) the dev devices handed out are not phones – they have no phone radio in them
2) they do not run the bb10 software.