Fignuts: When there is blood on the streets

If Baron Rothschild were alive right now, he would be grinning from ear to ear...and the subject of his glee would be RIM.

I would launch into a Microsoft diatribe, but quite frankly I don't have the time or energy right now, so I am going to cherry pick the easiest target of the day. The situation is grim: A peak stock price of $144.56 in 2008 to a miserly $7.69 as of this writing, declining revenues and profits/income, smartphone market share plummeting from 20% in 2009 to a tad bit over 10% as of today, carriers bugging RIM to cut fees for services, and forcing their employees to cut vacations/work 6 day work weeks.

Here is a greatest hits of RIM missteps:

1) Focus on corporate users and ignore the average consumer - sure, corporate purchases is still where the money is at (for the PC market...ahem). In an era of BYOD (bring your own device), the average worker is going to most likely bring in an iPhone...and corporate IT departments are warming to the idea.

2) QWERTY keyboard - I know, I know that I'm gonna get a lot of flack for saying this...but this is for old people who don't want to acknowledge what's going on. I'll take a full touch screen and Swiftkey keyboard any day of the week (I have used a Motorola Q)...I have fat fingered on a QWERTY keyboard just as much as I have with a full touch screen.

3) Ignoring the iPhone to it's peril - RIM CEO Jim Balsillie: “The iPhone’s impact on our business will be minimal.” I know this is Monday morning football coaching, but this smacks of the arrogance and complacency of RIM's mindset

4) The Blackberry Storm - A half ass attempt to bring a touch screen to market, turned out to be a flop and indicative of how RIM tried and failed to emulate any smartphone with a full touch screen.

5) Co-CEO leadership - to quote Ron Swanson of Parks and Recreation: "Never half-ass two things. Full ass one thing". 'Nuff said

6) The Blackberry Playbook - See #4 and 5. They released it knowing that many of it's features were broken and half baked, but figured that their user base would accept it while they spit out updates to fix the issues...turns out RIM was wrong with this assumption.

7) Horrific App store - Apple is the only one who has pulled it off

8) They aren't a computer company, and smartphones aren't phones, they're computers - A brilliant dissection by daringfireball (see link below).

The new CEO claims that they aren't in a "death spiral", to which I would say fine...you still have a very large install base, decent income for your services, and you still have larger market share than Microsoft and Bada...but and that's a big but... Microsoft and Bada are kind of a joke right now in terms of the mobile space.

I think the only relevant questions right now are: Who is going to buy RIM, for how much, and when? My guess is that it will be Microsoft, $7 Billion and maybe after 2012 Q4 earnings are released.

I'll finish with a quote by Nietzsche: "...if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."