5 Things RIM’s New CEO Absolutely Must Not Do | TechCrunch

5 Things RIM’s New CEO Absolutely Must Not Do | TechCrunch

Whenever a company appoints new leadership here in the tech world, the blogosphere seems to unanimously post about what the new top dog needs to do to make his or her company better. I promise, you’ll see dozens of headlines today talking about what Thorsten Heins must do in order to save BlackBerry.

In many cases, I agree with what’s being said. RIM’s in trouble, and without a new vision the company risks slipping even further behind the competition. You know… “the other fruit company.”

So rather than list out all of the things Heins needs to do to save the company (which, we can all agree, would take a really long time), I’m going to tell you guys the five things that Mr. Heins absolutely must not, without a doubt, under no circumstances… do.

That is, if RIM wants to keep selling smartphones.

Be Complacent

In less than a day at the post, Heins has proven himself to be quite the quote machine. My favorite: “I don’t think there is a drastic change needed.”

Alright, Mr. Heins. In that case we have a problem.

First, let’s just take a look at RIM’s numbers over the course of 2011. According to comScore, RIM slid from an 8.6 percent market share in January (as far as mobile phone OEMs go) to a 6.5 percent share in November. Where smartphone OSes are concerned, the dip was much more pronounced. RIM’s 30.4 percent share in January fell to almost half that, 16.6 percent, by November.

If these numbers can tell us anything, it’s that a drastic change is in fact needed. Yes, the BlackBerry brand did make a huge impact on the mobile landscape, and sure, there are still plenty of people in the Middle East and Europe (and even here) that heart their little BBM-machine. But whatever mind share the brand used to have is dwindling, just as the numbers are.

Sure, a superphone with killer specs would be great. A solid operating system? Yep, the company needs that too. But until leadership over in Waterloo realizes that enterprise-level security on messaging and a physical keyboard are no longer bringing in the “ooohs” and “aaahs”, nothing will change.

Lose Track Of Time

Anticipation can be deadly, as can forced urgency. RIM has struggled with both in the past year.

The company first announced it would be transitioning over to the QNX OS in April of 2010. It’s now 2012. Granted, the BlackBerry PlayBook is enjoying its QNX status (although the PlayBook has its own problems), but when we focus on smartphones the company has yet to offer or even announce a QNX-powered (BBX, or more formally BB 10) BlackBerry.

A big part of the mobile realm has to do with timing. If you know Apple’s about to release a new iPhone or that Google is about to pop out a new version of Android, you aren’t going to run out and pick up a new phone. No, you wait. It’s a fact these companies need to embrace.

If I’m a BlackBerry owner in April of 2010, and I hear that an entirely revamped, much more powerful OS is in the works, I want to wait to upgrade my hardware. But over the course of the year, Google launches Ice Cream Sandwich and Apple releases Siri and the iPhone 4S. And what do you know? RIM’s market share tanks to half of what it was. Obviously QNX wasn’t worth the wait for many.

I’m not saying the move to QNX is a bad decision. The opposite, in fact. But if you’re going to bet the company on a brand new OS, get yourself in gear and make it happen. And in the meantime, shut your lips about when it’ll be available and how awesome it is. You’re only frustrating your loyalists and asking potential Android/Apple defectors to come and check out… well, nothing.

But rushing is just as fatal, which is the story of the PlayBook. No need to relive that nightmare, but you know the important parts: no email, no contacts, no calendar, no PlayBook owners. It’s quite simple: If it’s not ready, we don’t want it.

Neglect Developers

RIM is more than just your basic OEM. The company provides services and, to an extent, builds out its own software. It’s an ecosystem, which is what every electronics company strives to be. But RIM’s ecosystem is one with a serious lack of wildlife — a tundra, if you will. Especially compared to the jungle of iOS and Android.

Developers take what is usually a very fundamental system and make it do everything and anything. Without the App Store, my iPhone is actually quite limited. That’s what owning a BlackBerry is like.

Compared to two app stores with well over half a million apps each, RIM’s BlackBerry App World boasts just 38,363. Unfortunately, at least 5,000 of them are visual themes. RIM’s own services like BBM are great but compared to other platforms, such a small selection (even with BBM) is a tough sell.

The good news is that any app built for PlayBook 2.0 will also run on BB 10, so in that way, RIM can double up on developers. Still, you need developers to build before you can run their app on both tablets and smartphones, and if I were a developer I’d already have lost interest. RIM needs to take note of this and create some incentives quickly.

If you have an iPhone or Android device, there’s probably an app for that.

Ignore Employees

Perhaps the greatest mistake that former RIM leadership made was to ignore the folks that comprise the company. I say it may be the biggest because who knows what kind of mind-blowing ideas and game-changing opportunities RIM has passed up under old leadership. In the past year, numerous open letters from both curernt and ex-employees have pointed to the same thing, over and over again: Mike and Jim didn’t listen to the lower level.

RIM has plenty of young guns, I’m sure, who are much more in tune with what today’s consumer wants from their smartphone. In fact, many of them probably grew up in a world where mobile phones were ubiquitous and smartphones are the growing norm, which can’t be said for Mike, Jim, or Thorsten.

But that’s not really the point. The point is that every single one of his new employees will be looking to see if he’s Mike/Jim’s new puppet (especially after this morning’s comments). They’re all waiting, likely pregnant with ideas on how to better the company, to see if he’ll turn an ear to them or not.

Hopefully he’s got his listening ears on.

Follow

It’s easy to follow when you’re already behind, but Mr. Heins must resist. It would be easy to follow Apple and Android because that’s largely what the company has been doing since 2009, when it launched a competing app storefront a year after Apple launched the App Store. But I’m less worried about that.

After the comments he made earlier today, namely that no change is needed, it would seem that Heins is already on Lazaridis and Balsillie’s team. The problem is that they refused to look forward, instead focusing on their glorious past. By saying that no change is needed, Heins is basically agreeing with them and telling the board, investors, and BlackBerry owners that the company has no real plans to compete in this landscape.

While the spec is dead (and megapixels don’t really mean that much in terms of picture quality), I remember the names Titan 2 and Xperia S because HTC and Sony hooked up these phones with 16- and 12-megapixel sensors. In the past year every flagship has had an 8-megapixel camera, and while I don’t think that either of these phones are a huge upgrade, they’re still the first of their kind.

It wouldn’t hurt RIM to try to be first at something. The company has likely forgotten the feeling of being first, which means they’ve likely also forgotten the value of it.

But everyone, most importantly the consumer, loves to be first.

4 Things RIM’s New CEO Can Do to Fix the Company

Link

Peter Pachal

Research in Motion, better known as RIM, used to be one of the most dominating smartphone makers in the world. But it’s seen its market share — and reputation — flounder of late. So it wasn’t that surprising that the company finally did what many investors were asking for: get rid of its co-CEOs and replace them with a new leader, former COO Thorsten Heins.

Some are already saying that it’s too late for RIM, that mobile competitors Apple and Google are too far ahead, and that the company should essentially quit trying to market its own BlackBerry ecosystem and make some kind of soul-selling deal along the lines of Nokia‘s partnership with Microsoft. While that might be the best course of action, Heins has already said that getting the BlackBerry 10 (BB10) software and the next generation of phones out of the gate is his top priority. Short of some kind of surprise merger (Samsung? Microsoft?), it’s BB10 or bust for RIM.

Heins’ strategy is very risky considering the head-start RIM’s competitors have had, but it has the biggest long-term potential payoff. Make no mistake, though: RIM will have its work more than cut out for it when the first BB10 phones arrive later this year. Not only will it have to show that it has a platform as good as iOS orAndroid — it’ll also have to show that it has actual advantages over those other choices.

But RIM can’t do that if it continues to stumble like it has in recent years. Here are four things the company should do right the ship and and start sailing toward success.

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1. Narrow Your Focus

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RIM has had the mixed blessing of being both a go-to platform for enterprise customers, thanks to its devices’ utility and security, and a popular choice for many younger people because of the text- and tweet-friendly keyboard — not to mention that easy-on-the-cellphone-bill href=”http://mashable.com/follow/topics/blackberry-messenger/”>BlackBerry Messenger service. While having your products appeal to more than one demographic isn’t directly a problem per se, it appears to have dulled RIM’s focus somewhat.

This was seen most clearly in the PlayBook tablet, whose design and marketing was all over the map. It debuted without a native email client, requiring the user to pair it with his BlackBerry smartphone to use email. This, of course, presupposed that the person was a BlackBerry owner, and therefore likely a business user. Yet the marketing, advertising and even the name itself implied a tablet for “play,” putting things like gaming and video playback top priority. What?

I think that at some point RIM, tempted by the lure of being cool to “the kids,” started to push heavily in marketing to younger demographics, but the company has dulled its focus on its greatest strength: services and devices for enterprise and business. RIM should get back to emphasizing its roots by targeting business. If others recognize that those same products work for them personally as well, great. But first things first.

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2. Build a Better PlayBook

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I think it’s safe to say at this point that the BlackBerry PlayBook is a bona fide turkey in the history of tablet launches, and RIM needs to shift its attention to PlayBook 2 (not to be confused with PlayBook 2.0, the software update that will supposedly “fix” the original PlayBook). The second version of the company’s tablet must be in the works somewhere, even if it’s probably going to wait until BB10 is out before it has its debut.

PlayBook 2 needs to capitalize on RIM’s key strengths and be a true enterprise tablet. Ever since the AmazonKindle Fire launch there’s been a lot of pressure in the tablet market to take prices down to heretofore unseen lows. But RIM shouldn’t just go cheap — it needs to offer a tablet that will actually be useful for business.

RIM already has its back-end enterprise services to offer, but that’s a crutch. Heins needs to put himself in the mind of a business that isn’t all about BlackBerry already. What do RIM’s devices offer that business?

A new PlayBook could differentiate itself with something like near-field communication (NFC) to accept mobile payments. NFC actually has multiple uses, and so far no tablet has it. But that’s just one idea. More broadly, RIM needs to put aside the J Lo videos and Angry Birds and pack the hardware with features that businesses will actually use.

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3. Invest in Apps

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It will be a Herculean feat to attract significant developer interest in BlackBerry 10, and RIM’s going to need help. The recent move toward platform-agnostic HTML5 apps is helpful, but that helps everyone to some extent, so RIM can’t rely on it. And the stopgap measure of having the PlayBook run Android apps is a bad idea — it serves more to undermine RIM’s platform than help it. More direct action is called for.

App revenue sharing has largely settled on a 70/30 split between developers and OS makers, respectively. I’m not an economist, but it seems fairly arbitrary to me — what’s stopping RIM from giving an 80/20 cut? Or maybe a 100/0 cut for a limited time (say, the first 10,000 downloads)?

RIM also needs to hammer on the developer community that, while its market share may be dropping, it’s still significant. Add in some incentives like better revenue sharing, subsidies and better support than its competitors (and certainly less of a fragmented platform than Android) — developers will have a potentially great ROI on BB10.

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4. Resist Temptation to Fast-Track

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Probably the most egregious thing RIM’s done in recent years to shoot itself in the foot in recent years is push out products before they’re ready. This was most clear with the PlayBook, but the touchscreen BlackBerry Storm was a buggy mess when it was first released. Rumors abound of many more BlackBerry devices coming to carriers before they’re ready.

Ever since RIM announced that the first BB10 phones would be delayed until late 2012, the criticism has been unending, and there will be tremendous pressure on Heins to fast-track the devices for an earlier launch. But he shouldn’t. BlackBerry 10 and its accompanying devices need to be a hit right out of the gate if RIM is to have any hope of growing market share again. Heins has said he’ll abolish the practice of putting out half-baked products, and he should stick to it. If he accomplishes that at least, he’ll be well on his way to putting RIM’s shaky past behind it.

Los 5 ‘pecados mortales’ de BlackBerry - Tecnología - CNNExpansion.com

¿Quieres tener éxito? Ve lo que ha hecho el fabricante del teléfono inteligente…y haz lo contrario; RIM ha caído en una espiral descendente ante la competencia de Apple y Google.

Las acciones de RIM han perdido más del 50% de su valor desde febrero. (Foto: AP)

Por: Kevin Kelleher

En el ultracompetitivo mundo de la tecnología móvil, vales tanto como tu última innovación. De allí que las marcas se encumbren y caigan a una velocidad vertiginosa. Pero aun bajo esos estándares acelerados, la caída de Research in Motion (RIM) este año ha sido súbita y brutal.

Las acciones de RIM han perdido más del 50% de su valor desde febrero, y su cuota en el mercado estadounidense de los smartphones ha decrecido de 34% a 24% en los últimos ocho meses. El teléfono BlackBerry solía ser el celular más codiciado hasta la llegada del iPhone de Apple y de los teléfonos con software Android de Google. Competir contra estas compañías ya es bastante difícil, pero la gerencia de RIM, además, ha cometido este año varios errores graves que han convertido su declive en una completa crisis corporativa. Se trata de un caso de estudio para aquellos que quieren aprender cómo no se debe gestionar una crisis, comenzando por estas cinco lecciones:

No hagas promesas que no puedas cumplir. El 28 de abril, RIM dijo que en el actual año fiscal esperaba obtener una ganancia de 7.50 dólares por acción, citando los nuevos productos BlackBerry que serían lanzados más tarde en el año. Algunos analistas cuestionaron esta optimista previsión de beneficios, calculando que la ganancia por acción estaría más bien cercana a los 6 dólares. Y efectivamente, RIM publicó los resultados financieros del primer trimestre y ajustó a la baja su previsión de beneficios, entre el rango de los 5.25 dls y los 6 dólares por acción.

¿Qué sucedió? RIM había depositado sus esperanzas alcistas en los proyectos que la compañía preparaba, pero luego tuvo que retrasar los lanzamientos. Las actualizaciones de los modelos BlackBerry Torch y Storm aparecieron a finales del verano, después de lo esperado. Y en 2011, un smartphone tardío es un smartphone muerto. Ante la noticia de la demora, las acciones de RIM cayeron 27%, su nivel mínimo en casi cinco años.

No lances productos a medio hacer. Los retrasos en lossmartphones coincidieron con el accidentado lanzamiento de la tablet de RIM, la PlayBook. Las reseñas que recibió la pizarra fueron mixtas, la crítica más preocupante fue que la PlayBook no contaba con el servicio de correo electrónico que hace tan atractivos los teléfonos BlackBerry para los usuarios. En consecuencia, las ventas iniciales comenzaron bien pero cayeron pronto. La PlayBook se sentía como un producto que se lanzó precipitadamente al mercado para competir con la iPad.

Es mejor atraer a los desarrolladores, no alejarlos. A fin de cuentas, una plataforma móvil es tan buena en la medida en que lo son los desarrollares que escriben para ella. Antes incluso de que HP comprara Palm, WebOS era un buen sistema operativo, pero no logró atraer a una importante cantidad de desarrolladores. Pese a la fortaleza de RIM en el mercado empresarial, los desarrolladores han preferido hacer aplicaciones para iOS y Android. RIM intentó remediar este abandono anunciando que sus dispositivos podrán ejecutar aplicaciones de Android, pero esto puede resultarle contraproducente. Hay señales de que esta decisión ha alejado a los desarrolladores de la nueva plataforma de RIM, la QNX, que alimenta a la PlayBook.

No mates al mensajero. Luego de que el sitio de noticias tecnológicas Boy Genius Report publicara una carta anónima pero auténtica de un ejecutivo de RIM, la compañía respondió con su propio comentario anónimo. RIM hizo bien en responder la carta, pero erró en la forma de hacerlo. La carta tenía ideas sensatas, aún si eran difíciles de digerir para la cúpula de RIM: admitir que Apple "borda"smartphones, centrarse en los consumidores y no en los operadores de telefonía y considerar un presidente ejecutivo con "experiencia e ideas innovadoras".

La respuesta de RIM fue una de las acciones más torpes en materia de relaciones públicas en los últimos tiempos. Desestimó campantemente las sugerencias de la carta con una declaración de rechazo. ("RIM está totalmente consciente tanto de los retos como de las oportunidades que encara la compañía, y los aborda de forma agresiva"). Peor, se puso a atacar al autor, sugiriendo que era un "fraude" o que tenía "motivaciones ocultas." Esta respuesta inspiró una docena de críticas, a cada cual más apasionada, de los empleados de RIM, actuales y antiguos.

Hacer oídos sordos hubiera sido una mejor respuesta: RIM se vio arrogante y altiva.

La lealtad no se da por sentado. Esta lección pone de manifiesto al resto. Hace tan sólo un par de años, RIM había construido un envidiable grado de lealtad entre sus consumidores, empleados e inversionistas. También estaba en condiciones de ganarse la fidelidad de los desarrolladores. Pero sus errores en los últimos meses han erosionado toda esa buena voluntad.

Apple ‘asedia’ el feudo de BlackBerry - Tecnología - CNNExpansion.com

El mundo corporativo, dominado por el teléfono de RIM, comienza a verse conquistado por el iPhone; Google también empieza a seducir al público que antes sólo confiaba en la canadiense

Una encuesta informal de Reuters mostró que sólo Exxon y

Boeing usan en exclusivateléfonos BlackBerry. (Foto: Reuters)

NUEVA YORK (Reuters) — BlackBerry, antes omnipresente en los negocios, enfrenta duros desafíos en ese mercado, porque más compañías están permitiendo que sus empleados elijan sus propios teléfonos inteligentes e incluyan aplicaciones de seguridad de otros proveedores.

Uno de los principales argumentos de Research in Motion (RIM) para la venta de BlackBerry han sido sus características de administración y de seguridad, que atraen a gerentes de tecnología de la información ansiosos por controlar lo que hacen los trabajadores y por proteger los sistemas de ataques informáticos.

Pero con compañías como Good Technology y MobileIron ofreciendo aplicaciones que pueden alejar a los gerentes de tecnología de la información de las BlackBerry, los analistas afirman que las presiones que sufre RIM en el mercado de consumo pueden llegar a su negocio principal: el corporativo.

Sólo dos de nueve grandes compañías estadounidense consultadas por Reuters dijeron que usan exclusivamente el BlackBerry: Boeing y Exxon Mobil.

Las otras siete (Alcoa, Caterpillar, DuPont, Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, Microsoft y Verizon Communications) apoyan al menos a otra marca, como los iPhone de Apple o teléfonos que usan el software Android de Google o Windows de Microsoft.

"Diría que su base empresarial ha sido realmente asediada, primero por Apple, después por Android", dijo sobre RIM John Jackson, analista de dispositivos móviles de CCS Insight.

"Lo que está pasando en el mercado de consumo está repitiéndose en el mercado de las empresas. Han sido considerablemente afectados en su mercado central corporativo", añadió.

La participación de RIM en el mercado de teléfonos inteligentes en Estados Unidos se mantuvo en 25% durante abril, desde el 35% de octubre del año pasado, empujando a BlackBerry al tercer lugar desde el primer puesto en el mercado, según la firma de investigación comScore.

La mayor parte de los problemas de RIM, según los analistas, puede encontrarse en su demora para presentar nuevos teléfonos para competir contra los iPhone o los aparatos que usan Android y que fabrican Samsung, HTC y Motorola.

La compañía química DuPont, que tiene 67,000 empleados, empezó a darles a algunos trabajadores la opción de usar el iPhone en el cuarto trimestre del año pasado. En unos pocos meses, aumentaron hasta llegar a un cuarto de los teléfonos inteligentes de Dupont, según Eric Smith, gerente de telecomunicaciones de la compañía.

"La tecnología que la gente tiene disponible en sus vidas diarias y personales la quieren usar en el trabajo. La gente tenía sus propios iPhone y iPad, y dijeron: ¿por qué no podemos usarlos para el trabajo?'", añadió Smith.

BlackBerry pierde ‘seguridad'

Para ayudar a los gerentes de tecnología de la información hay un número creciente de opciones de seguridad, como correos electrónicos y tecnología encriptada, que les permiten a los administradores de la información controlar a distancia los datos en los teléfonos personales.

Además, la influencia de los gerentes de tecnología de la información en la selección de celulares está disminuyendo. Los teléfonos inteligentes adquiridos por las compañías bajaron a 7% del mercado en 2010 desde el 15% en 2009, según la firma de investigación y contabilidad Strategy Analytics.

Otro sondeo realizado por la firma de investigación Yankee Group encontró que 55% de los administradores de tecnología mencionaban a RIM como su sistema operativo favorito, pero que ese porcentaje caía a 34% cuando se les preguntaba que preferirían en dos años.

Boeing no ha encontrado una opción de seguridad en la que confiar además de BlackBerry, dijo el portavoz del fabricante de aviones, Kenn Johnson, pero agregó que sentían la presión para permitir más opciones en los celulares.

"Siempre sabemos que hay un deseo por ese aspecto 'cool' (a la moda), pero no puede ser a expensas de la seguridad", dijo.

RIM, You’re Done Here

by John Biggs on June 22, 2011

Research In Motion is done. They’ll be bought in the next year or so, their products will roll into whoever buys them – Microsoft, most probably – and they’ll go the way of Nokia, Danger, and countless other mobile platforms. They’ll exist independently for a while and then be subsumed. It’s over.

Here’s why.

There is no money in “business” phones. Blackberries aren’t status symbols. They’re the real-world equivalent of the thick, heavy IT-department-assigned business laptop. They’re staid, boring, and unwanted but people are used to them and, for email, they are quite capable. But that’s about it.

But these phones are increasingly getting a drubbing from IT departments who are starting to support more popular devices including, obviously, iOS and Android phones. No one ever got fired for installing a BES, but you can be sure someone will get fired for not supporting WebDAV standards over the next few years.

You can make lots of money selling hardware to fleet buyers, to be sure. But when those fleet buyers are saving money by refusing to pay for devices, where do you think consumers are going to go? Back to the same hardware they’ve been saddled with for years?

Their audience has already moved on. I remember a few years ago I was invited onto MTV (and never invited back) to talk about the “top smartphones.” I think it was 2007. These included a Windows Mobile device, a new Sidekick, and, inexplicably, a Blackberry Curve. The results of a viewer survey had the Sidekick beat out the other devices quite handily but what I couldn’t understand was how the Curve, for all its benefits, could have made it onto the list in the first place. The Sidekick was a lifestyle device and even the WinMo-powered Dash by HTC could be seen as a lifestyle device. But the Curve? Never.

RIM has an audience, but that audience is shrinking. Arguably they had a good run, but there are plenty of other devices from other manufacturers – Microsoft included – that have much more cachet in terms of general appeal. Even BBM no longer sounds as enticing as it once did, especially in an era of Facetime, Qik, and Hipchat.

RIM’s competitors are stronger and faster. Android is taking the lead and iOS is a close second in the general consumer phone market and, barring some misstep by either party, RIM will always be a distant third. I’d even say that Windows Phone, post Mango, is looking to be a better business solution for many users than anything RIM has to offer. What could RIM do to pull out of this death spiral? Release consumer phones? Nope, tried that. Release business phones? Nope, tried that. Release a tablet? Nope. Which brings us to our next point:

They blew the tablet race. Completely. They blew it. RIM is estimating they’ll sell 800,000 after preliminary expectations of 2.4 million. Even if every single Blackberry owner was forced by their IT departments to buy a Playbook at gunpoint they probably couldn’t sell half that number.

The Playbook is a beautiful, well-made device. But it is a year too late and far too confusing for the average consumer. Their biggest mistake? RIM failed to provide native email out of the box. That’s the long and the short of it. The biggest name in email couldn’t pull off email.

No matter what they change, they can’t escape the past. Take a look at the video below. This is from Nokia’s last smartphone to run a variant of Meego. Looks pretty great, right?

But it’s not. It will never see the light of day and, in fact, all of the dedicated work put into the UI and the OS will soon be lost. Why? Because it’s far too little far too late. Nokia, a giant in the industry, now exists as a shell of its former glory. RIM can, and will, go the same route.

RIM’s legacy is writ large on the world around us. Almost every major enterprise mobile system is patterned on their excellent email and PIM solution. But they are now slaves to their own success. They can’t sell anything other than a keyboard-candybar phone in an era where the keyboard is increasingly irrelevant or hidden away until needed. This failure of imagination in both consumer and manufacturer is their curse. In a world where every phone is smart and every phone does email, there is little to recommend any RIM phone over any other. It’s over and now we’re just waiting for the buy-out and inevitable disappearance of one of the greatest mobile companies in modern memory.

As “biased” as you’ll say I sound in this post, I’ll be sad to see them go.

RIM se desploma 21.45% en el Nasdaq - Negocios - CNNExpansion.com

Los títulos de la compañía cerraron a la baja luego de que reportara una menor ganancia trimestral; en fabricante de BlackBerry registró ingresos por 4,900 mdd y utilidad de 1.38 dólares por papel.

EL fabricante de BlackBerry, RIM está perdiendo

competitividad en el mercado debido a la falta

de productos atractivos. (Foto: Reuters)

NUEVA YORK (Reuters) — Las acciones de Research In Motion Ltd cayeron 21.45%, a 27.75 dólares, en el cierre de Wall Street, este viernes, un día después de que el fabricante de la BlackBerry informara de débiles resultados trimestrales.

RIM reportó el jueves pasado una ganancia trimestral más baja y sus ingresos no cumplieron con su propio pronóstico, que ya era débil, obligando a la compañía a reducir sus perspectivas.

La compañía alcanzó una utilidad neta de 695 millones de dólares, o 1.33 dólares por acción, sobre ingresos de 4,900 millones de dólares. Analistas esperaban utilidades de 1.32 dólares por acción sobre ingresos de 5,100 millones de dólares.

Hace un año en el mismo periodo RIM ganó 1.38 dólares por acción sobre ingresos por 4,240 millones de dólares.

Dos analistas recortaron sus recomendaciones para los títulos y varios redujeron sus objetivos de precio.

Frente a la intensa presión de Apple Inc y de Google Incen el mercado de los teléfonos inteligentes, RIM advirtió además de que sus últimos modelos no llegarían a las tiendas en Estados Unidos hasta bien avanzada la temporada de compras por el regreso a clases.

El retraso en los nuevos lanzamientos de teléfonos inteligentes y la incapacidad de RIM de arrebatarle cuota de mercado al alicaído gigante de los teléfonos móviles Nokia hizo que Citigroup bajara la recomendación de la acción a "vender" desde "mantener".

Analistas de Citigroup dijeron que RIM se está perdiendo la temporada de vuelta a clases en Norteamérica debido a la falta de nuevos productos atractivos, generando el riesgo de una pérdida de conciencia de la marca entre los consumidores.

"En general, consideramos que RIM no tiene soluciones de corto plazo para mejorar su cartera de productos, percepción de marcas, para revigorizar sus acciones,aumentar sus ingresos o su rentabilidad", escribieron analistas de Citigroup en una nota a clientes.