BlackBerry: A Comeback?

It's been tough watching the old champ waste away to just a shadow of its former glory. But BlackBerry-maker RIM is plotting a comeback, and it might gain some traction with its newest models.

Published

4 months ago

Categories

Technology, Finance

Topics

Finance, Consumer Electronics

Companies

Apple Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Research In Motion Ltd, Nokia Oyj

Transcript

TV AND WEB RESTRICTIONS~*NONE* It's been a painful few years. Watching the former champ waste away like this, with his retro 35-button keyboard and that antique VGA display. Worst was not knowing if he was being stubborn, or if he just didn't realise the main event had long moved on to younger, more modern contenders. Flash forward to today... the old blackberry has gone in for a makeover... and he's gearing up for his last shot at glory. But taking on market leaders Apple and Android won't be a walk in the park. Just ask Nokia's CEO. He tied his firm's revival to Microsoft's new windows 8 mobile O/S... The result? Despite a huge marketing push and a reasonably attractive product, barely a blip on the sales charts. For RIM, this is the first time in a long time that a new handset has generated a real buzz beyond its dwindling base of loyal users. Investors are certainly giving the firm a fighting chance, even with a little pre-launch profit-taking, shares have more than doubled in the last 90 trading days. Analysts though are less generous. Discounting the majority that are sitting on the fence, more say sell rather than buy. IN Q4 2012 RIM shipped just 6 and a half million handsets... dropping out of the top 5 list of smartphone makers. To make it back to third place for the whole of 2013, which is the CEO's target ... it'll need to sell about 45 million handsets for the whole year. After years of disappointing execution, from those bickering Co-CEOS who've now left, to the playbook tablet fiasco and painful service outages, RIM desperately needs a win. (SOUNDBITE) (English) REUTERS REPORTER, JON GORDON, SAYING: "The Canadian tech veteran is certainly coming out swinging with this new release, but the question is: how many punches can it actually land?" ENDS