RIM promises "strongest second half ever"
Brushing aside the threat of the iPhone 3G with its vastly-improved enterprise support, RIM's Jim Balsillie is saying that the second half of 2008 will be his company's "strongest second half ever," saying that there isn't a lot of overlap between the demographics targeted by the iPhone and BlackBerry line. Most of his excitement stems from the upcoming launch of the Bold, a device that easily destroys the spec sheets of every BlackBerry to come before it -- though with the Thunder in the pipe, we imagine he's reserving some celebratory high-fives for that one, too. The big words come on the heels of a somewhat lackluster first quarter call for the Canadian firm in which it announced that quarterly earnings expectations would be met, while simultaneously warning about some difficulties in the second quarter. If those "difficulties" have anything to do with people getting upset that John Mayer got his Bold before anyone else, well, we wouldn't be surprised in the least.[Via mocoNews]



















Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ed Hardy @ Jun 30th 2008 7:26PM
I find it easy to believe that RIM will have its strongest second half ever, as just about every quarter it doubles revenue and profits, when compared to the same quarter a year ago.
And RIM's "lackluster" conference call included the announcement that the company had only twice the revenue and profit the same period of 2007, when analysts had been predicting more than 100% growth.
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Ed Hardy
www.brighthand.com
smiley rojas @ Jun 30th 2008 9:49PM
i got a curve 3 weeks ago and love it
chuck @ Jun 30th 2008 10:12PM
The claim that there's little overlap is a huge load of bullshit. RIM themselves admitted that they were aiming at typical consumers and NOT businesses with the pearl and curve lines.
I switched from a Blackberry (Pearl) to an iPhone, and I'm sure that millions of others switched from RIM devices to get the iPhone.
Jake H. @ Jun 30th 2008 10:38PM
i'm bout to go buy a couple of shares. i'm bettin on this dude bein right.
if you look at the facts, RIM is a good company to invest in. blackberrys are getting intergrated into more businesses every day, and you dont hear about companies ditching the blackberry for something else do ya? why? because people(including myself)cant freakin put down their blackberry once they start using it, and thats good for me considering i'm bout go invest $ in RIM.
plus, with etrade mobile, bigtime investors might start getting blackberrys. i kno i got excited when i saw the demo for it. big investors getting blackberrys is goood.
Andrew T. @ Jul 1st 2008 12:48AM
Agreed. Obviously some will switch from a BlackBerry to an iPhone and vice versa, but at the end of the day, BlackBerry users will always increase more than those who switch over to another phone. I'm pretty sure the iPhone will attract some businesses to use it as their primary source of communication, but to totally dominate the smartphone market, the iPhone NEEDS a significant amount of business users and that will not happen unless Apple decides something REALLY groundbreaking that will truly make businesses forget the BlackBerry.
Jake H. @ Jul 1st 2008 11:44AM
i agree with andrew. i know a couple of business people who swapped from a blackberry to an iphone, and thats because they only use mobile internet, and for that the iphone can occasionally be better. i use my blackberry for maps, weather, REAL email, and mobile internet, and IMHO, the blackberry is better. thats besides the fact that i never liked anything with a touchscreen and no keyboard(venus, voyager, etc are cool, but stuff like the instinct, touch, and iphone....not so much)