RIM Healthy, But Getting Bad Publicity

By Thea Neuman (Google)

Many analysts who follow RIM’s moves say that the company isn’t going to go out of business anytime soon. Yes, there are many companies that relied on Blackberries for many years, but they have now started giving other smartphones to their employees. For example, Suffolk Construction, a loyal Blackberry using firm from more than 10 years, has now started giving iPhones to its employees (and there are more than 700 of them). Company’s information officer, Corren Collura, said that they had plans to switch to iPhones sometime later, but with news about RIM’s downfall, they had accelerated their process, and quickly switched to iPhones. It seems that it is bad publicity that is ruining RIM. It’s media who is creating a negative image of RIM, which is further harming the situation.

RIM’s problems underscore why a ubiquitous technology is losing its cachet so fast. From the past few years, all major organizations (and even government offices) supplied their employees with Blackberries. About two years ago, more than 42% of all smartphone devices used in American offices were Blackberries. This number has gone down to almost 11% and Apple/Android devices have taken charge now.

Even bigger blow to RIM occurred when it announced that its smartphone shipments have gone down. With this news, other companies also considered switching over.

This month in media blitz, Thorsten Heins reported to a radio show that the company is perfectly fine and there is nothing wrong with it. RIM is still sitting on a huge pile of cash (about $2.2 billion), and has no debts on its hands. While RIM’s directors and supporters are positive about the health of the company, there are some analysts who say something else. Shaw Wu, the analyst at Sterne Agee, believes that strong financial figures haven’t done much to gain confidence among customers. He feels that the billions of funds that RIM has will last just a year or two. He feels that the company can burn all that cash really quickly.

The one thing that proved harmful for RIM was the lack of new offerings. According the Michael Holt, the Morningstar analyst, the delay of BB 10 is inexcusable. With the rate at which other smartphone makers are launching new devices, RIM has nothing to offer, and this is proving to be detrimental for the company. Holt said that if RIM does not roll out new devices soon, they will burn up the cash that they have pretty soon.

While critics predict doom, Pete Devenyi, RIM’s senior vice president for enterprise software business, had something else to say. He said that RIM is now directly communicating with corporate customers, and some of them were concerned about RIM’s future. They want RIM to be successful once again, as they didn’t want to give up their Blackberries, and just wanted reassurance that the company is going to survive.

All this is just showing that already existing problems of RIM are being accelerated by bad publicity. If people have a little faith in the company, they shouldn’t give up on their Blackberries. And in no time, RIM can emerge to the top again.