With all the missteps that Research in Motion has made, really over the past 2 years or so, the company has frequently been the butt of a lot of jokes. After last weeks horrible earnings call and cries from many analysts and investors for RIM to axe it’s co-CEO roles, Jim Balsille and Mike Lazaridus find themselves featured in a recent JoyofTech.com comic.
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Stephen Jarislowsky, chairman of Jarislowsky Fraser Ltd., said in an Bloomberg interview the day after RIM’s Q1 Fiscal 2012 earnings call that the Montreal-based investment firm has already reduced its holdings in Research in Motion by 50% or more and that the company is “on its way out” as far as the rest of it’s stake is concerned. Jarislowsky said that “RIM is resting on their laurels”, and that “Steve Jobs is a much better marketer than RIM”.
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Via the Inside BlackBerry Developer Blog, Research in Motion today announced that it has acquired Scoreloop, a pioneer in mobile social gaming, who will bring it’s cross-platform social mobile gaming developer tool kit to the BlackBerry platform. Scoreloop CEO Marc Gumpinger had this to say over on the Scoreloop.com website…
It is with great pleasure that I share this exciting news: Scoreloop has been acquired by RIM!
Over the past few months we’ve had the opportunity to become intimately acquainted with the RIM team and their strategy for the the BlackBerry platform. We’ve seen first hand their excitement and ambition to build the best platform for mobile games. So we’ve joined forces to help make this a reality!
As part of RIM, we’ll be in the unique position to integrate deeply into BlackBerry platforms to take mobile gaming to the next level together. We’ll continue our cross platform approach, but you’ll see that our BlackBerry solution will be unparalleled.
We can’t wait to share what comes next!
Sincerely, Dr. Marc Gumpinger, Scoreloop CEO
RIM has already enabled developers to create social app experiences through our BBM™ Social Platform, but it will, however, be interesting to see what Scoreloop brings to the table…
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comScore released its March 2011 report on mobile subscriber market share last Friday, and, when it comes to the the smartphone category, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry continues to lose subscribers at an alarming rate dropping 4.5%, now sitting at 27.1%, in the 3 month avg. ending Mar. 2011 vs. 3 month avg. ending Dec. 2010.
The BlackBerry has slipped to number 2 behind Android who jumped up 6% to 34.7% U.S. share. The BlackBerry is still in front of the iPhone which had just a .5% increase in share now sitting at 25.5%. If the BlackBerry, however, continues the free-fall that it has been on for the better part of the last 18 months, it will slip to number 3 by the time the next comScore report comes out. Rounding out the smartphone category where Microsoft and Palm who both lost 0.9% market share dropping to 7.5% and 2.8% respectively…
[Via comScore]
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We first started hearing rumors that Research in Motion was going to take BlackBerry Messenger cross-platform back in March of this year. At a BlackBerry World Q&A session for developers, however, Research in Motion’s Mike Kirkup, when asked when this would happen, said that RIM had no plans or intentions of taking BBM cross platform.
We still may have a chance, though, at seeing some type of cross platform integration between third party IM clients and BBM as RIM could open up their API to developers allowing other chat applications to communicate with BlackBerry Messenger.
[Via BerryReview]
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[Mobile YouTube Link]
Research in Motion demoed the native BlackBerry PlayBook email client that they’ve been working on which will be released this summer and it does support both BES and BIS, or, what RIM calls ‘full BlackBerry experience’. This does address 2 of the 5 things that I want to know about the BlackBerry PlayBook native email client. From what I’ve heard, a fair amount of non BlackBerry smartphone users bought BlackBerry PlayBook tablets, so, it would also be great to hear if IMAP or Active Sync will be supported as well.
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Today at BlackBerry World Research in Motion announced the new touch BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930, the first full QWERTY keyboard BlackBerry devices with a touch screen, and, are expected to ship this summer. Both the Bold 9900 and 9930 will run RIM’s newly renamed BlackBerry operating system, BlackBerry 7, and at only 10.5mm thick, the new touch BlackBerry Bold devices are the thinnest BlackBerry devices to date.
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Rumors started floating around a couple of days ago that Research in Motion has renamed BlackBerry 6.1 to BlackBerry 7 just before its unveiling at BlackBerry World next week. Well, in yesterday’s inverstor’s call, RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie confirmed that name change is indeed a reality because ‘It’s such a big update from 6′.
There is no question that BlackBerry 7 has a lot of new features, a lot of anticipated and welcomed features at that. The problem for BlackBerry 7, however is the same problem as when it was called BlackBerry 6.1, is the same problem that plagues it’s predecessor BlackBerry 6, and the same problem for BlackBerry 6′s predecessor, OS 5… BlackBerry 7 is still based on the same core operating system that was shown to be completely inadequate four and a half iPhones ago.
[Via CrackBerry]
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Research in Motion announced yesterday that it has acquired cloud-based calender and scheduling management services provider Tungle.me.
Tungle is a leading provider of cloud-based calendar and scheduling services that makes it easy for users to share their availability and schedule appointments regardless of their choice of desktop, mobile or cloud-based calendar. Tungle connects users on Google, Yahoo!, FaceBook, TripIt, Plancast, Outlook, iCal, LotusNotes, LotusLive, and WindowsLive.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, however, Tungle has raised more than $6.36 million in funding, and, with more than 40% of Fortune 1000 companies using the service, it is probably safe to assume that the purchase price is well North of that…
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