Research In Motion’s new BlackBerry 7 smartphones are seeing strong initial sales among businesses looking to upgrade from older BlackBerry smartphones, however consumer sales have been weak according to Canaccord Genuity. In a research note, Canaccord analysts Mike Walkley and Matt Ramsay found during channel checks that upgrade sales of BlackBerry 7 devices in North America were quite strong with enterprise customers in August. Specifically, Verizon Wireless saw strong Bold 9930 upgrade sales among its substantial enterprise customer base, while AT&T and Sprint saw mixed sales. T-Mobile’s $300 Bold 9900 has not been selling well according to Canaccord’s checks. Read on for more.
Its not to anyone’s surprise that RIM’s stock this year has been less than stellar. Rumors of the company selling its self to another tech giant have been circulating for quite some time now. In addition, key personnel have left the company to pursue other endeavors. The results of all this are that shareholders are becoming more restless as they continue to see their shares fall.
Now shareholders are beginning to become more vocal about their investments with BlackBerry maker RIM. In a letter to the board, Vic Albioni head of Jaguar Financial, an investor in RIM, expressed his frustrations with the company, and added some pretty bold suggestions.
And another one bites the dust. More troubles arise as RIM loses yet another key team member. Alex Ivanovic lead product manager for BlackBerry Business Cloud Services for Microsoft Office 365 has officially left the team. Alex spearheaded integrating BES with Office 365. According to reports Alex apepars to be quite happy with his new job working for nulayer, a company that specialized in developing apps for iPhones and iPads. As more and more personnel continue to part ways with RIM it leaves us wondering whats really going on inside RIM.
With the market being as crazy as it has been the past few weeks, and the ever watchful eye set on RIM stock, this Second Quarter Fiscal 2012 results call should be rather interesting. Kevin, and his whole one share of RIMM stock I’m sure will be tuned in so that may mean we’ll live blog it just in case they make an unexpected announcements, not very likely but you never know. Sidenote: Kinda funny they mention you can listen on your BlackBerry PlayBook.
It’s a sad day for NHC Blackberry Alliance. To say I was shocked when I saw word that one of our absolute all-time favorite Research In Motion employees, Mike Kirkup, tendered his resignation today would be an understatement.
RIM has a new contest starting tomorrow that they announced in their forums (thanks DT for the tip!). Their @BlackBerryHelp account is about to hit 500,000 followers and to celebrate they are giving away some schwag. Specifically they are giving away 20 BlackBerry backpacks and 10 BlackBerry sweatshirts. The contest involves you answer trivia questions RIM posts on their @BlackBerryHelp account and you need to be the 5th correct tweet to the question to win.
The contest is open to residents of the US and Canada and the 30 contests will be held between tomorrow and September 7th. Keep an eye out on http://twitter.com/blackberryhelp for the contest invites! Check out the full details here.
Way back in April we pointed out some of the documentation RIM provided on the security features of the BlackBerry PlayBook. Those security features were put to the test by penetration testers working for NGS Secure who poked and prodded both actual PlayBook devices and the simulators and confirmed the devices security.
I did love some of the lines from the first part of the report which was just released like:
Although Neutrino is similar in many ways to a traditional UNIX environment, the QNX microkernel is substantially different from the monolithic Linux kernel.
In efforts to continue to embrace new users and attract even more business users, RIM has announced that they will be launching a BlackBerry Management Center to cater to small business’ of under 100 users, like our Company ( Night Hawk Computers ). The goals of this are to make it easier for small companies to manage not only business owned, but also personal BlackBerry devices. The cloud styled service will allow users to back up their devices, wipe remotely including the SD card, reset passwords, and more with ease, and the best part is that it is a free online service for the users.
BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has agreed to work with London authorities as they begin their investigation into recent riots. According to some Londoners, rioters were using RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger service, along with social networks such as Twitter, to organize the attacks. “It is clear that technology is being used, including in demonstrations, to direct people and undermine the police,” London’s deputy assistant commissioner Stephen Kavanagh told Bloomberg. “It is not for us to to moan about this, but to adapt policing style and deal with it.” RIM typically prides itself on the security of its BBM service and has denied access to governments worried the chat platform could be used for planning terrorist attacks. “We feel for those impacted by the riots in London,” RIM wrote in a recent tweet. “We have engaged with the authorities to assist in any way we can.” Read on for more.
Earlier this morning the group TeaMp0isoN hacked their way into the official BlackBerry Blog. Just yesterday, authorities in London had asked RIM for help given the role BBM has played in the riots taking place. RIM put out an official statement in regard to BBM and the riots, to which the hackers had this to say:
Night Hawk Computers Blackberry Alliance 