“Wow! They must be breaking mirrors, opening umbrellas and walking under ladders over at RIM because this is starting to get unbelievable,” wrote blogger Jordan Crook at TECHCRUNCH.COM
“A big rig, carrying around $1.7 million worth of BlackBerry PlayBooks, was stolen in Indiana.”
With Research in Motion Inc. now unmistakably in a world of hurt, Crook’s comments captured those of many others in the blogosphere over the past day or so. Online commenters seemed to be gawking at RIM with a mixture of concern, bewilderment and perhaps, a bit of guilty pleasure.
“So, if you happen to see about 5,000 BlackBerry Playbooks being sold in a shady store in Miami, call the cops,” Crooks continued later in the post. “Not out of the moral goodness in your heart, but out of sheer sympathy for RIM.”
Meanwhile, other bloggers, including George Leong at WALLSTREETPIT.COM, had little sympathy for RIM [Nasdaq: RIMM; TSX: RIM]. He chastised the company for its “poor operational execution and mismanagement.” In particular, he cited the delay of the new BlackBerry 10 smartphone as inexcusable.
“Just when you thought that things could not get worse, RIM announced last week that it would have to delay the launch of its new line of BlackBerry 10 smartphones until late 2012. I’m not talking of a minor incident here, but a major gaffe for a company trying to convince consumers and investors that it has a bright future, and that they should trust the company. Failing to deliver a new product by a few days or weeks is acceptable, but it’s not when it’s months.”
Leong said that many people are now turning their backs on RIM for good. “RIM draws little excitement and barely any coverage for new products, and that’s when they are delivered on time. Even in RIM’s home base of Canada, Apple is king.”
Other bloggers, including Mordechai Luchins of TECHCITEMENT.COM, wrote that RIM’s troubles reminded them of another fallen giant.
“I can’t help thinking the phrase ‘shades of Palm’ over and over again when I hear about BlackBerry’s moves,” Luchins wrote.
“Back before they were owned by HP, Palm made a ton of missteps (split in two, get back together, open retail stores, sink all their R&D dollars into the Folio—a device no one wanted) that they then tried to fix by announcing an all-new, all-different OS on an exciting new handset. Then, they let the Palm languish before bringing it to market, giving up way too much buzz. To make matters worse, Palm kept doing that, with the refrain of ‘coming soon’ for all their new devices.
“Isn’t ‘coming soon’ when we’re going to see Android emulation on BlackBerries? How about the ability to use a BlackBerry PlayBook’s calendar and e-mail functionality without an accompanying RIM handset? Oh look, that’s ‘coming soon,’ too.”
