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Thursday, June 28, 2012

RIM melts down. Chapter LXIV.

Quiet day on the blog today, as I've been a little consumed with covering BlackBerry maker Research In Motion's latest, inglorious chapter.

The company announced its most recent quarterly financial results today. To no one's surprise, they were terrible. Huge, worse-than-expected losses, downward-trending sales of now-obsolete devices, and another delay in the release - to Q1 2013 - of the new operating system and smartphones, known as BlackBerry 10, that will supposedly save the company.

By the time they appear, there may not be much left to save, as today was something of an inflection point in the company's history, the day when, in the eyes of many, it passed the point of no return. As an analyst and a journalist, I understand the factors innately, and can write about and explain them in infinite detail. As a Canadian who lives just up the road from RIM's headquarters in Waterloo, this pains me to no end. There's no joy in watching one of Canada's brightest lights fall on such hard times, no pleasure in watching thousands of the brightest minds wonder what their future holds.

I've done a lot of writing, talking and interviewing, and it looks like it'll continue straight into tomorrow. I spoke with CTV Kitchener's Meghan Furman and CTV London's Tara Overholt for packages on the 6pm newscasts, and with Richard Madan for his report on tonight's CTV National News. I'll be on-air tomorrow morning on CTV's Canada AM, then back on-air for my regular weekly tech segment with CJAD Montreal's Ric and Suzanne. Articles for the Toronto Star and Yahoo! Canada will be live before long.

And I'll be holding my BlackBerry a little more carefully all the while. Because something tells me I may not be buying another one.

I take no pleasure in seeing these stark words on my screen. None of this had to happen.

2 comments:

  1. Today's the day when iPhone turns 5 :/ is this the end of an era? Or is there one last miracle left? - only time shall tell.

    ReplyDelete

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