Reporting second-quarter earnings today, Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said that the worst may be over. He had better hope so, because the world’s largest handset maker is clearly having a tough time of it. Nokia posted a gruesome 66 percent drop in profit in what the company generously described as a “tough” second quarter.
Research in Motion best get to work refreshing its shopworn BlackBerry line, and fast, because growing competition from new rivals like the iPhone 3GS and Pre are cutting into its market share. According to retail checks conducted by Piper Jaffray analyst T. Michael Walkley, the BlackBerry slowed as the summer kicked off and AT&T and Sprint began peddling new smartphone offerings from Apple and Palm.
A noteworthy metric in the latest mobile browser share report from StatCounter: RIM’s BlackBerry has been making some meaningful gains in the world-wide mobile browser market. According to the research house, which tracks page views by browser on mobile devices and the desktop, RIM has boosted its share of the market quite a bit since the beginning of this year.
With the Palm Pre and iPhone 3GS in stores and the myTouch 3G, T-Mobile’s second Google Android phone, headed to market, is Research in Motion’s product lineup beginning to look a bit dated? Which leads to another question: Has RIM’s success made it too complacent? GC Research analyst Tero Kuittinen believes it has.
Good apparently isn’t good enough for RIM investors. The BlackBerry maker reported earnings for its first fiscal quarter that rose 33 percent to $3.42 billion on strong sales. And while that was in line with the Street’s $3.41 billion consensus estimate, the company’s shares slipped nearly five percent in after-hours trading.
So those reports about Research In Motion acquiring Dash Navigation? True. RIM said today that it had purchased the maker of maps for GPS devices for an undisclosed sum.
If you follow Apple, you’ll never catch up. That seems to be the message of the banners being hung around San Francisco’s Moscone Center in advance of Apple’s World Wide Developers conference next week. “One year later. Light-years ahead” they proclaim in a shower of iPhone app icons — an obvious reference to the App Store’s success and the rivals who’ve yet to match it.
Apple and Research in Motion may disagree on many things, but they’re of the same mind when it comes to the the netbook phenomenon: It will be short-lived. Asked about Apple’s interest in the category during a late-April earnings call, COO Tim Cook said the company has none. Turns out, Research in Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie feels pretty much the same way.
2009 is going to be a banner year for Google’s Android mobile operating system. Strategy Analytics estimates shipments of handsets running the OS will grow 900 percent this year as more vendors adopt it. At that rate, it will far outpace the growth of Apple’s iPhone, whose shipments the company expects to increase 79 percent in 2009.
Question for you: What was the best-selling consumer smartphone in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2009? What’s that? Apple’s iPhone? Wrong. According to market researcher NPD, it was Research in Motion’s BlackBerry Curve, which slipped past the iconic device in market share bolstered by Verizon’s Buy One, Get One promotion.
“Sentiment on the stock has never been worse in our opinion….We are somewhat concerned that earnings, subscribers and unit guidance are all likely to be guided down–sequentially.” Broadpoint AmTech analyst Rob Sanderson said that of Research in Motion in a March 18 note to clients. Boy, was he ever wrong. After market close Thursday afternoon, RIM reported fourth-quarter earnings and revenue that easily bested analyst expectations.
Ugly just isn’t going to cut it in today’s mobile device market. That’s what Dell is finding as it attempts to build a smartphone capable of holding its own against the Blackberry, iPhone and upcoming Palm Pre. According to Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu, the PC maker’s first smartphone prototypes have been rejected by wireless network operators, which found them dull compared with current and upcoming devices.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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