Sometimes I have had not nice things to say about RIM and their Blackberry products. After seeing this video, I’ve decided to take it all back. Why should any company spend time developing a mobile operating system when instead they can create an incredibly high-production music video, singing about their developer support to the tune of an REO Speedwagon song?
Your move, Tim Cook. - Matt
Photo: Sideshow Bruce, Flikr
It was close. Sony was hacked just about every day for a month. BlackBerry suffered PlayBook tablet apathy and its longest-ever outage. Netflix’s Qwikster debacle sent its stock tumbling by more than 75% since the summer.
But my tech turkey of the year is Hewlett-Packard. Or, more specifically, HP’s board of directors.
The company’s board continued a decade of — well, incompetence is a strong word, so let’s say dysfunction — by backing its CEO Leo Apotheker’s plan to get out of the PC business. It also killed off the TouchPad tablet that had come out just a few weeks earlier after hyping it for the better part of the year.
After slashing TouchPad’s price to $99, HP sold out its stock in days. Oops! Turns out HP may have had a product people wanted after all — hang onto that thought.
A month later, HP’s board decided it had enough of Apotheker and fired him. Fair enough, HP lowered its business outlook this year more times than Netflix changed its mind on its DVD business. Of course, executing on a strategy to convert a hardware company into a software company, when software made up 2% of sales, wasn’t exactly a cake walk.
Oops.
In October, HP said it was going to hang onto its PC division after all. Oops! Just kidding, PCs are actually pretty nifty machines.
It’s as if HP saw Netflix, Sony and Research In Motion and said, “Hey, good idea! Let’s do a double-reverse-course on our premiere product, anger and confuse the hell out of all of our customers and release a tablet at a price point where no one would consider buying it.”
If that’s not enough for tech turkey of the year, I’m not sure what is. -David
How do Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie still have jobs? 
— Daring Fireball’s Jon Gruber, wondering how the RIM co-CEOS are still in charge after seeing this Bloomberg article about RIM falling below book value (the sum of all their assets) today.
Photo: Courtesy, Research In Motion
In this tweet today, Research In Motion quoted a CNET review, which claims the just-released Bold 9930 is the “the best BlackBerry of the year.”
Well, that’s objectively true: The BlackBerry Bold 9930 is the only BlackBerry that RIM has released this year. (The Torch 9850 is coming out next week.)
So, congrats, RIM … sort of? -David
Earlier this month, RIM competitors Apple and Palm unveiled the new, and widely anticipated iPhone and Pre smartphones. After the touch screen BlackBerry Storm received largely negative reviews in November, 2008, RIM is expected to unveil a touch screen BlackBerry with a physical keyboard, much like the Pre, in the coming months. — From the last time I wrote about RIM earnings, which was June 18, 2009. Remember when the Pre was “widely anticipated?” And when people were excited about the prospect of the Torch? Oops! -David
Photo by CNNMoney
One of the perks of being a tech journalist are all the new toys we get to try out — companies generally send us products for a week or two, and after trying them out they’re sent back to the company (it keeps us honest).
Except for this PlayBook. It was given to us for Julianne to review, and every time we contact RIM asking where to send it back to we don’t get a response. I’ve been keeping it in a drawer at my desk, pulling it out only when sub-standard products are released and I can say “But at least it’s not as bad as the PlayBook!” It is the herpes of tablets - once you have it, you can’t get rid of it. And unlike herpes, even the person who gave it to you doesn’t want to see you again.
RIM, I beg of you, please take this back. Seriously. At least so I can stop coming up with bad herpes jokes. - Matt
Update: Our pleas were heard! A RIMM rep emailed us with an address so we can send the PlayBook back from whence it came.
Here’s Julianne’s review:
We’ve been playing around with the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet for a few days. Frustratingly, its impressive specs are undercut by missing apps like email, calendar, and BBM. Here’s our vid review of the tablet, which goes on sale today. -Julianne
This is totally safe for work, I promise:
http://rim.jobs
Wow. Just, wow.
Hat tip to Rosa over at Gizmodo for tweeting this. -Matt
Source: CNNMoney
Oracle and Research in Motion announced their past-quarter financial results Thursday after the bell, and both beat Wall Street analysts’ estimates for earnings and revenue.
RIM: Don’t count RIM out just yet. The BlackBerry maker has been beaten down by investors this year, but the company raised its outlook for the current quarter and for 2011.
Shares of RIM initially spiked then fell (Paul: “Investors realized they’re still not Apple or Android”), then rose 4% again after hours.
RIM posted record BlackBerry shipments in the quarter, sending 14.2 million devices to wireless carriers, up 40% over last year.
Sales were up 19% and profits were up 45%.
Oracle: The enterprise software giant said its fiscal second-quarter net income rose to $1.9 billion, up 28% from a year earlier. Excluding one-time charges, Oracle said it earned 51 cents per share, compared to a median estimate of 46 cents per share from analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.
Sales rose 47% to $8.6 billion, topping analysts’ forecasts of $8.3 billion.
The biggest boost to the strong results were software licenses, which soared 21%.
Shares of Oracle, which have soared since former HP CEO Mark Hurd was named president of the company in August, rose 3% after hours. -David
