RIMM's Collapse Was Predicted in 1993

Best Jim Balsillie quote ever contained within....

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No Questions Please for Research In Motion

Here's a "how to" guide from Jim Balsillie of Research In Motion on how to avoid tough questions from your research analysts

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Why Do Canadians And Americans See Research In Motion So Differently?

Some Canadian money managers believe that "the pessimism of the big US bulge-bracket firms" are responsible for Research In Motion's low stock price. Really?

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Those 2000 RIMM Layoffs? 1500 of Them Were Hired Since February 28th

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction for Research In Motion.

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The Top 6 Reasons Research In Motion Shot Itself in the Foot

How the once omnipresent smartphone provider ceded the market to others in 4 short years.

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Research In Motion’s Leading and Lagging Indicators

RIMM Bulls and Bears need to get their leading and lagging indicators clear.

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Did CEO's Hockey Obsession Doom RIM?

By Eric Jackson07/13/11 - 07:00 AM EDT

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- When Apple(AAPL_) introduced the iPhone to the world in January 2007, Research In Motion(RIMM_) dismissed the device as a competitive threat, or so we would learn later.

Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis stated internally, according to reports, that no one would want the equivalent of a personal computer on a phone. People just wanted an email messaging device, he asserted -- a worldview shaped by the company he'd built.

But the death knell for RIM probably came earlier, on Oct. 5, 2006. That was the day the other RIM co-CEO, Jim Balsillie, bid $185 million to buy the Pittsburgh Penguins.

That bid began a childish, multiyear quest by Balsillie to buy a hockey team, which diverted his focus from the core RIM business. RIM's competitive position today is arguably unfixable because of Balsillie's quixotic quest.

Balsillie's bid for the Penguins ran from October to December 2006, when he finally withdrew his bid in frustration. But five months later, he announced he was going to buy the Nashville Predators instead.

Again, however, the bid was not to be. After the league fought it and the owner got cold feet, the deal was canceled a year later.

But Balsillie wouldn't let go of his dream. With a net worth much greater then than it is now, he made a $212.5 million offer to buy the Phoenix Coyotes in May 2009. This deal also got derailed several months later.

Did a hockey fantasy kill RIM? Wasn't Jim Balsillie working on his own time to spend his own money, which he has a right to do?

Well, you can call it a coincidence, but here are the numbers:

• Since Balsillie's Oct. 5, 2006 bid for the Penguins, RIM's shares are down 16%.
• Over that same period, the Nasdaq is up 24%, and Apple -- riding the incredible success of its iPhone, which it turns out people did want -- has risen 358%.

Maybe this would have happened anyway. Maybe Apple was just too strong and RIM's directors should shrug their shoulders and say, "Hey, it wasn't our fault because this is just a competitive business."

.....

[** This post is an excerpt of the full article, which is available on TheStreet.com by clicking here. Free Site.**]

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No Silver Bullets for $RIMM

Although some analysts and shareholders are touting some quick fixes for curing what ails RIM, none of them will work.

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RIMM Bull vs. RIMM Bear Discussion from Last December

Here is a look back on an interview I did with the biggest RIMM Bull -- Gus Papageorgiou of Scotia Capital -- from last December. I have been and continue to be a huge RIMM Bear.

The original article appeared in Real Money.

Looking Through a Bull's Eyes By Eric Jackson RealMoney Contributor 12/28/2010 7:30 AM EST Click here for more stories by Eric Jackson

An epic debate has been raging for the last six months between the bulls and the bears on Research In Motion (RIMM - commentary - Trade Now). I am decidedly on the bear side, but I acknowledge that there are good arguments on both sides

The debate is reflected in the variance in price targets on the company. They range from $35 to $130.

The stock is back to $58, after getting up to the low $60s in recent weeks (prior to the most recent earnings release).

That earnings call was unique because it didn't result in an instant 10% (plus or minus) move in the stock. For once, the bulls and bears found equal amounts to chew on in the results and the stock was basically flat -- though it's dropped a few percentage points since then.

I believe that anytime an investor has a strong view on a stock, they should vet it by talking with someone who sees things from the complete opposite perspective.

So, last week, I called George Papageorgiou of Scotia Capital. George is the one who has the $130 price target on Research In Motion. I asked to chat with him, making it clear that I had a short position in the company.

He got back to me right away, willing to talk, which made me like him. What I also like about him is that he's got a bold call. He's not like 85% of analysts who like to stay within 10% to 20% of a stock's price and say nothing controversial. George is letting it ride with $130.

Another positive for George is that this has been a call of his for over a year now for the stock. He's sticking to his guns here.

I asked him to tell me why I and all the other Research In Motion bears are wrong. In bullet points, here's what he said:

• Earnings and profitability growth: This is a stock trading at 8x trailing earnings and growing earnings 30%.
• International growth: George doesn't believe Research In Motion gets any credit for Latin America and Southeast Asia. People are paying full price for phones there and opting in huge numbers for unlimited prepaid BBM/Facebook/email packages.
• There continues to be strength in the enterprise: This isn't changing anytime soon, according to George.
• Playbook: George believes this tablet will be a winner. It's going to be the first dual core processor on a tablet (making it 2.5x as powerful as the iPad). George actually thinks many users will prefer to use the Playbook as a phone with full Flash support.

George believes that the market will gradually see how low the company's shares are priced by the middle of next year.

Moreover, he thinks that Research In Motion might be able to show the Playbook's QNX operating system running on smartphones by the second quarter of the company's next fiscal year and that the co-CEOs are being conservative in not committing to dates (though they weren't so conservative last September when they pre-announced the Playbook seven months before shipping).

He also believes that Research In Motion got a bad rap for ceasing to report quarterly net additions in subscribers and devices shipped. After all, neither Apple (AAPL - commentary - Trade Now) nor Nokia(NOK - commentary - Trade Now) report such figures, so why should Research In Motion get so much grief? He is right.

George asked me why I thought the company wasn't a buy here (credit to him for asking). My view is that Research In Motion's price-to-earnings multiple is a reflection of market expectations for an international repeat of what happened in North America. He took offense to me characterizing all of North America for slowing when only the U.S. has. "In Canada, RIMM still has 50% share," he reminded me.

But there are basically no decent Android phones (Google (GOOG - commentary - Trade Now)) in Canada, I responded. There is no HTC Evo or Incredible or Motorola (MOT - commentary - Trade Now) Droid. Maybe Research In Motion pulled some strings with the Canadian carriers, but they can't keep good phones out for long.

We will have to see if the other international markets maintain their BlackBerry momentum or if they start to flag. It's clear that, in China, Research In Motion is nowhere, and that's not going to change anytime soon.

All that said, it will take six months to see how successful the Playbook is and how Research In Motion's results play out. I believe they're dead wrong, but I appreciate the views of George and the other Research In Motion bulls.

Eric Jackson had a short position in RIMM and long positions in AAPL and GOOG at the time of publication.

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RIMM's Titanic Collapse

By Eric Jackson
RealMoney Contributor
6/20/2011 10:35 AM EDT
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Research In Motion (RIMM - commentary - Trade Now) got walloped last Thursday. After the company lowered its full-year earnings guidance, the stock dropped more than 20%. The stock has seen over half its value eviscerated in the last three months.

In late December, I interviewed RIMM bull George Papageorgiou of Scotia Capital in a discussionthat appeared here in RealMoney. At the time, George still had a $130 price target and told me that the bears (like me) were missing RIMM's tremendous growth potential from international markets.

He said that other market observers were overly fixated on RIMM's problems in the U.S. I countered that I believed the market was correctly anticipating that the U.S. was foreshadowing RIMM's future in other markets, rather than being an exceptional case.

Few people remember that last October, Apple's(AAPL - commentary - Trade Now) Steve Jobs made an unexpected appearance on that company's earnings call, staying for the entire call, including the Q&A, which is something Google's (GOOG - commentary - Trade Now) Larry Page could learn from.

The Apple call was notable for some comments Jobs made about Research In Motion. He basically pronounced RIMM dead on arrival as a company. He said that Apple had now passed RIMM in terms of number of quarterly units shipped. He said that Apple was a software company while RIMM was a hardware company. He surmised that RIMM would never be able to regain its momentum, now that Apple had passed it.

You might not remember all the specifics of the call, but you probably remember that RIMM co-CEO Jim Balsillie went apoplectic and maligned Jobs for trying to perpetuate the "Apple distortion field."

Well, here we are eight months later, and basically everything -- and I mean everything -- that Jobs said about RIMM has come to pass. RIMM resembles a passenger from the Titanic flaying wildly in the cold Atlantic Ocean. It has some plans that it hopes will rescue it by late 2012, but by then it will likely be way too late.

...

[*** This post is an excerpt of the full article, available by clicking here to go to RealMoney.com. Note: subscription required. ***]

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Research In Motion Needs a New Story

By Eric Jackson
RealMoney Contributor
6/3/2010 5:29 PM EDT
Click here for more stories by Eric Jackson

No other space is quite as hot these days as the mobile Internet. Usage is exploding around the world, despite the economic slowdown. Handset suppliers are constantly coming up with new models and features to attract users.

Yet one of the pioneers of this field, still regarded by many as a dominant player, has been a stumbling laggard for two years now: Research In Motion (RIMM - commentary - Trade Now). Despite the BlackBerry's efficiency and good looks (I am a loyal user myself), Research In Motion has fallen from grace in the eyes of investors. The company needs a new story to tell and needs it fast.

Apple (AAPL - commentary - Trade Now) CEO Steve Jobs recently spoke at the D Conference on a variety of issues. One comment I found very interesting concerned the future of the PC. He compared the PC to a truck in an early farming society. There was a time when everyone had a truck. Then cars arrived. And gradually, people stopped needing trucks. Mobile devices, like the iPhone and the iPad, in Jobs' view, will be the shiny new cars toward which we will soon gravitate. We will no longer be tethered to our desktop PCs to get access to the Web.

If you buy this -- and I do -- this should be a great thing for all mobile Internet providers. However, that's not what's happened. There have clearly been winners and losers. So far, Research In Motion has been one of the losers.

Apple unveiled the iPhone in January 2007. Since then, the company's stock is up 210%. Research In Motion's is up 32%. That's still much better than the older handset makers, such as Nokia (NOK -commentary - Trade Now), which is down 49%, Motorola (MOT - commentary - Trade Now), which is down 63%, and Palm (PALM - commentary - Trade Now), which is down 61%. Sure, Apple sells computers and iPods too, but, let's face it, the market has been most excited about Apple's mobile Internet opportunities since the iPhone launch.

....

[This post is an excerpt of the full article, available by clicking here to go to RealMoney.com. Note: subscription required.]

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