This document analyzes the situation of RIM and the Blackberry. It outlines RIM's declining sales and market share compared to Apple. Key points include RIM selling 500,000 Playbook tablets in Q1 2011 compared to Apple's 9 million iPads. In October 2011, RIM announced it would delay the launch of the Playbook OS 2.0 until February 2012. Two anonymous letters to RIM's management criticized the company for its slow pace of change and outdated 2005 business model in today's rapidly changing market.

1. RIM
Situation Analysis
October 26, 2011

2. RIM Sales Growth

3. US Smartphone Penetration

4. US Smartphone market penetration

5. US Market Penetration of all cell phones

7. And then there’s the Playbook…
Q1 2011:
Approximately half a million Playbook tablets
sold in comparison to more than nine million of
Apple’s iPads.
Oct 26, 2011:
RIM announces it will delay launch of PlayBook
OS 2.0 tablet until February 2012

8. Excerpts from anonymous “Open letters”
to RIM Management
Success cannot be borne of a 2005 status quo
when the world looks a lot different now than it
did even 12 months ago.
It can take weeks of time to make small changes,
and months to make major ones.

9. RIM 10-Year Performance

10. RIM Timeline
•
January 1998 IPO on the Toronto Stock Exchange
August 1998 Releases Inter@ctive pager 950
1998-2008: Releases devices running on GSM, CDMA, and iDEN networks. BlackBerry
devices are ubiquitous in the corporate environment.
October 2008, Named one of Canada's Top 100 Employers
February 2009 Expands global operations Workforce: 12,000 world wide.
June 2009 Acquires Dash Navigation
August 2009, Acquires Torch Mobile
August 2009, Fortune Magazine: RIM fastest growing company in world: 84% growth in
profits over three years
March 2010, Acquires BlackBerry app developer Viigo
April 2010, Acquires QNX Software Systems to enhance the user experience between
smartphones and in-vehicle audio and infotainment systems
April 2011 Release of Playbook tablet computer
June 2011, Investor push to split dual-CEO structure withdrawn
June 2011, Q1 2011 revenue will drop for the first time in nine years
June 2011: 2 anonymous open letters to board
July 2011 Cuts 2,000 jobs (11%), biggest lay-off in its history.
October 2011 One of worst service outages in the company's history.
Oct 25, 2011 Delays launch of PlayBook OS 2.0 tablet until February 2012

14. Number of current Blackberry models: 43
Number of current iPhone models: 6
(available in black or white)

16. Appendix
• This
is
frequently
where
you’ll
put
the
addi7onal
slides
that
don’t
find
a
place
in
the
main
presenta7on,
but
you
s7ll
feel
add
value,
and
you
might
want
to
u7lize.
Following
are
the
slides
we
didn’t
include
in
the
presenta7on

17. The week iPhone 4S came out, Blackberry trade-
ins spiked 80%.
Android trade ins increased 72%.
Source:
CNet

18. USA Today—Jim Balsillie co-CEO RIM
“The existing portfolio of BlackBerry products has
been in market for close to a year, and
delivering new products has proven more
challenging than anticipated.”

19. June 2008 to June 2011, RIM's shareholders lost
almost $70 billion or 82 percent
Biggest decline among communications
equipment providers, from $83 billion in 2008
to $13.6 billion in 2011.