What’s behind the drop in RIM stock? Maybe the reports of industry and financial analysts. Here’s a three of them:
Adam Leach, principal analyst at Ovum:
“The Blackberry 10 platform offers a differentiated user experience in today’s crowded and homogenous smartphone market. The Blackberry Z10 and Q10 will stand out from the Android masses and look distinct from Apple’s iPhone.
The user experience of Blackberry 10 introduces some nice new features but importantly builds on Blackberry’s UI heritage and therefore will certainly appeal to existing Blackberry users. However, the challenge for the company will be to attract new users and those that have already moved to alternative smartphones.
“Blackberry has rightly focused on insuring that the Blackberry 10 devices have a large catalogue of content and applications which is now essential for any modern smartphone, and achieving 70,000 applications at the launch of a new platform is good start.
“However, Ovum believes that despite a well-designed Blackberry 10 platform, that will certainly attract short-term interest from existing users the company will struggle to appeal to a wider audience and in the long-term will become a niche player in the smartphone market.”
Michael Walkley, Canaccord Genuity
“While we were impressed with the features of the new OS, we believe RIM has only closed the gap with more mature smartphone OS platforms and offered limited differentiating services or features to win back customers from more mature ecosystems. Further, we believe the carrier pricing of the new Z10 smartphone versus competing high-end smartphonescreates a tough environment for strong BB10 sales to turn around BlackBerry’s long term business trends.
“While BB10 may provide a better multitasking experience, we are not sure this is enough to convince users to switch back to BlackBerry but may be enough to keep some higher end users.”
Kris Thompson, National Bank Financial
“The launch failed to generate much buzz other than the appointment of songwriter and performer Alicia Keys as BlackBerry’s new Global Creative Director. The product launch included no material secrets. Skype and WhatsApp have committed to provide BB10 apps, but no timeline was announced. BB10 OS is expected to be available on the PlayBook, but no timeline was announced. The virtual Z10 will not be available in the United States until March. The qwerty Q10 will not be available anywhere until April, which is very, very disappointing.”