Research in Motion
You are currently browsing the articles from the VoIP Digest matching the category Research in Motion.
Merrill Lynch analyst Vivek Ayra has seen the light about the Blackberry Pearl. Based on strong-than-expected demand for the Pearl, Ayra has bumped up his 12-month target price on RIM to US$165 from US$135. His bullishness is based the imminent launch of a Cingular Pearl; a huge opportunity in Western Europe where smartphone sales are expected to grow 38% a year until 2010; low-cost monthly data plans such as T-Mobile's $19.99 all-you-can-eat package (Boy, it would sure be great to see those kind of deals in Canada but it's unlikely given how our wireless carriers have embraced "disciplined growth"); and the launch of new Pearl "siblings" such as the Indigo and Crimson, which will feature QWERTY keyboards (which is what will make me jump into a Pearl).
Speaking of smartphone growth, In-Stat has a new reported that shows unit sales nearly tripled from 2004 to 2005, and jumped by 50% during the first half of 2006. That said, In-Stat analyst Bill Hughes said there is reason for caution. "Many smartphone users continue to carry the very devices that smartphones are meant to replace. Also, users have been slow to add new applications to their devices. Most users have only downloaded a few applications." Tags: RIM, Blackberry, Pearl, Merrill Lynch, In-Stat
Written by Mark Evans on November 21st, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Main Page and Research in Motion.
What does Motorola's purchase of Good Technology mean? Does it suggest the consolidation of the mobile e-mail market is picking up steam? Will HP make a play for Seven Networks now that Good and Intellisync (Nokia) have been snapped up? Does this finally mean Research in Motion will see some real competition after owning the mobile e-market for the past five or six years? And what about the much-vaunted Motorola "Q" that was supposed to sell millions of units this year but appears to have stalled? It would be interesting to see how much Motorola coughed up for Good, which has raised more than $200-million in private equity from investors such as Kleiner Perkins. Canaccord Capital analyst Peter Misek said Good had no choice but to sell because the 470-employee company was "running out of money". For more, check out Blogging Stocks. Tags: Motorola, RIM, mobile e-mail, Kleiner Perkins
Written by Mark Evans on November 14th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Wireless and Main Page and M&A and Research in Motion.
After being given seven whole days to evaluate the Blackberry Pearl, I've decided...not to get one. Why? It likely has much to do with the fact I'm a long-time user of Blackberrys with a QWERTY keypad. As much as the Pearl's SureType keypad is supposed to be inuitive, I found it frustrating. Rather than jump on the Pearl bandwagon, I'm going to wait for the 8800 to come out later this year. While it's not as sexy as the Pearl, it's what I know and like. As for the Pearl, it's got a lot going for it. The small size, great screen and functionality is impressive, and I easily understand why carriers have been having trouble keeping it on the shelves. It's just not for me.
Written by Mark Evans on October 25th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Main Page and Research in Motion.
After a one-week hiatus, Talking Tech is back. Not surprisingly, I "hi-jacked" the show to talk about my decision to jump from the world of journalism to the blogosphere by becoming vice-president of operations with b5media, which operates a global new media network with more than 150 blogs that attract two million unique visitors a month. In response to a few inquiries, I'll continue to write my blogs and, hopefully, keep my hand in journalism a little bit. As for the rest of Talking Tech, Kevin and I spent quite a bit of time talking about Research in Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie's purchase of the Pittsburgh Penguins for $175-million. It also gave us an excuse to talk about the Blackberry Pearl, which became available in Canada earlier this week. Finally, we touched up on the Google-YouTube rumours, which picked up steam after a Wall St. Journal story and a TechCrunch post. Notes: The show notes for Talking Tech can be found here, the podcast is here. Thanks again to Fleishman-Hillard's David Jones and Ed Lee for their production magic - and their decision to keep working with Kevin and I even though we're no longer daily technololgy newspaper reporters...:)
Written by Mark Evans on October 7th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Uncategorized and Web 2.0 and Main Page and Podcasting and M&A and Research in Motion.
Is tomorrow the day Research in Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie finally spends some of his hard-earned Blackberry dollars to purchase the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins? When asked yesterday while attending the Toronto Maple Leafs' home opener if the rampant speculation was true, all Balsillie would say is "tomorrow", which is a telling departure from his previous "no comment" comments.
Update: According to reports out of Pittsburgh, Balsillie bought the Penguins for $175 million. Now, wouldn't it be cool if he moved the team to Hamilton or London, and Sidney Crosby got to play his home games in Canada? To put the Penguins' purchase in context, Balsillie's stake in RIM is worth about $1.4-billion. What will make Balsillie different from other NHL owners is he's a huge hockey fans who still plays hockey every week. Maybe he'll change the Penguins' name to the Hamilton Blackberries or the London Pearls.
Update II: I dropped Balsillie a congradulatory e-mail after the news of the deal became official. Much to my surprise, he responded within minutes. Among other things, Balsillie's got a lot of class.
Written by Mark Evans on October 4th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Main Page and Research in Motion.
Well, well....the Blackberry Pearl has finally arrived in Canada after so much hype - and a huge run up in Research in Motion's stock price. The Pearl will be available through Rogers Communications, which is also the exclusive carrier for the Nokia E62 and the Samsung C907. The Pearl will sell for $249.99 on a three-year contract. It will interesting to see if Rogers - and Bell and Telus when they get the Pearl down the road - become more creative with their data plans given the Pearl is more of a consumer device. Jim Balsillie, RIM's co-CEO, has talked about how many carriers are looking at pay-as-you-go or lower price data plans to encourage consumers to adopt the Blackberry.
Written by Mark Evans on October 3rd, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Main Page and Research in Motion.
While Research in Motion's strong fiscal third-quarter performance and stock option review are in the spotlight, an interesting theme from yesterday's conference call with analysts was the idea carrers will unveil pay-as-you-go or lower price, consumer-friendly packages. It is based on the idea you can increase the number of high-margin Blackberry users by making price less of an issue. T-Mobile, for example, is offering a $19.99 all-you-can-eat plan as part of its Pearl marketing efforts. Truth be told, one of the Blackberry's dirty, little secrets - and perhaps a key part of its success - is few people really pay to use them. Instead, their companies pay the Blackberry bills so most people don't pay much attention to how much it costs. Jim Balsillie, RIM's co-CEO, said Blackberry users are five to six times more profitable than regular cell phone users, which is why carriers probably love the Blackberry so much. Given the Pearl is more of a pro-sumer device, price will play a role in its success after the initial euphoria is over. Let's see if Canadian carriers, who have adopted pricing discipline as a corporate mantra, will buy into a Blackberry pricing approach.
Written by Mark Evans on September 29th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Main Page and Research in Motion.
The BlackBerry Pearl is getting rave reviews (Walter Mossberg, the NYT's David Pogue, Mark Evans :), etc.) and sales have been extremely brisk (some stores apparently sold out in the first week). That said, I'm wondering if news about a Pearl-like BlackBerry with a QWERTY keyboard (called the Blackberry 8800) will take some momentum out of the Pearl's sales. To be clear, there are a lot of people excited about the Pearl's cool look and feel and the fact it comes with a 1.3 megapixel camera as well as a video and music player. There are, however, some people less than enthused about the SureType keypad, even though it seems as easy to use as a QWERTY keypad. As information about the BlackBerry 8800 starts to escape from the geekdom (a.k.a. Engadget, BBHub, etc.) to the mainstream press will consumers decide to hold off on buying a Pearl until the 8800 is launched? As much as the Pearl is compelling, RIM may need to ramp up its marketing to show people how easy it is to use the SureType keypad.
Update: According to Think Secret, Apple plans to launch its iPhone exclusively with Cingular early next year. The iPhone will feature a 3-megapixel camera, iTunes and iSync.Apple apparently believe iPhone shipments will be 25 million in 2007. Engadget also has a post.
Written by Mark Evans on September 26th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Apple and Main Page and Research in Motion.
"Rick Mercer can sue me for copyright infringement; I'm used to it." - Research in Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie (and Canada's 2006 CEO of the Year along with Mike Lazaridis) after showing a video that makes fun of Blackberry users featuring comedian Rick Mercer during a speech in Toronto yesterday. Balsillie, of course, was referring to RIM's acrimonious copryight battle with NTP Inc., which was settled earlier this year.
Written by Mark Evans on September 19th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Main Page and Research in Motion.
I finally got a chance today to see the
Blackberry Pearl in action. In one word: sweet. It's much smaller than I expected but good things come in small packages, right? One thing that particularly impressed me is the
SureType keyboard. It was much more user-friendly than I thought and didn't require any tricks like double punching keys. As for minor quibbles, it would be nice to see an MP3 player with more bells and whistles such as the ability to create playlists. If the 1.3 megapixel camera was connected to a service such as Flickr, that would be useful and cool. Maybe these features will come in the Blackberry Opal or Blackberry Diamond!
Update: The
rumours continue to swirl about RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie's interest in buying the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins. When I asked him about it yesterday, he laughed and brushed the idea aside.....but where there's smoke there's often fire.
Written by Mark Evans on September 15th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Main Page and Research in Motion.
Nokia, which plans to start giving its devices names rather than numbers, could emerge as a more viable rival to the Blackberry (including the impressive Pearl) than the Motorola Q. I just got hold of a review unit of the Nokia E62 earlier this week, and came away pretty impressed. It comes with a nice colour screen, push e-mail, Bluetooth and QuickOffice (for viewing Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents). The E62 has a natural, intuitive feel that makes it quite easy to use. This compares with the Q, which was somewhat frustrating to manipulate. Perhaps this has to do with being a long-time Blackberry user. I'm not about to suggest the E62 will be the newest Blackberry-killer (editor's note: can we stop trying to promote this concept until a real rival appears?) but the E62 is pretty appealing. Nokia plans to encourage consumer adoption by aggressively pricing the E62. Rogers, the first North American carrier to offer it, will sell the device for $249 with a three-year contract.
Written by Mark Evans on September 8th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Wireless and Research in Motion.
After a lot of hype, speculation, leaks, etc., Research in Motion's Blackberry Pearl has finally been released into the wild, highlighted by an ahead-of-the-pack positive view by the Wall St. Journal's Walter Mossberg. For some early thoughts about the Pearl, which features push e-mail, a camera, video and music players, check out Engadget, CrunchGear and Gizmodo.
Written by Mark Evans on September 7th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Wireless and Main Page and Research in Motion.
Engadget offers up a early-bird look at the much-anticipated Blackberry 8100 - the "pro-summer" device that will come with a camera and the ability to play music and videos.
Written by Mark Evans on August 7th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Main Page and Research in Motion.
It's the ultimate mobile showdown these days: the
Motorola "Q" vs. the
Blackberry 8700. I've been using both recently - and the hands down winner is the 8700. Perhaps the decision has to do with the fact I've been using a Blackberry for a couple of years, but the Blackberry is still a user-friendly device that simply works well. The "Q", however, suffers from trying to carve out a niche by being all things to all people. There are so many features that none of them stand out. It is particularly frustrating to select an application, and then have to wait and wait for it to launch. And to make matters worse, there doesn't appear to be an escape button to quickly bail on the process. Meanwhile, the 8700 chugs along doing a couple things well (e-mail and voice). The 8700 has a colour screen and a new keyboard but it's still not sexy. It does work and that's what matters. For ahead to head review, check out
Blackberry Cool.
Written by Mark Evans on July 19th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on Wireless and Main Page and Research in Motion.
Not too surprising to see that NTP, the same company that got a bunch of millions from Research in Motion (RIM), the company behind the oh-so-popular Blackberry, is now going after Palm in the same manner.
The Blackberry story was hot earlier this year, and I'm sure the NTP/Palm face-off will be hot this tiime.
Wonder if Palm has learned anything from the earlier suit?
And now I have wonder about whether my Treo 650 will still be able to do what it's supposed to do?
It's always something ...
TrackBack (0)
| Comments (0) | Tag with del.icio.us | VoIP & Gadget Blog | Permalink: NTP Says 'Hands Up' Palm
Tags:
blackberry,
ntp,
palm,
research in motion,
rim,
treo 650
Copyright
VoIP & Gadgets Blog
Written by VoIP & Gadgets Blog on January 1st, 1970 with no comments.
Read more articles on Mobile Phones and BlackBerry and ntp and rim and palm and treo 650 and Research in Motion.