RIMM's competitiveness going forward is completely dead, anyone who doesn't think so is crazy. It doesn't matter if they release another OS this year, it's already too little, too late.

They'll keep shedding cash / employees / revenue until ultimately someone picks them up for the patent portfolio (or the patents are sold as part of a bankruptcy process).

It's pretty amazing how fast they went from crushing to being dead. They absolutely OWNED the corporate/government space.

Good example of a company not being able to adjust to market conditions. People don't like carrying multiple devices. People like touchscreens and large options when it comes to apps. People like phones that have great media capabilities. Smartphones became popular and addicting, as we've learned that they weren't anywhere close to elastic as economists assumed.

Goes to show how having an innovative leader with vision makes a huge difference in how a company does. Having a good idea and implementing it well can really work, but if you can't adjust to changes, it only lasts so long.

Android is a straight open-source copy of iPhone, the same thing Apple did against Microsoft 20 years ago (which makes me laugh when I hear Job's deathbed complaints against Google). RIM, right now, is the commodore 64.

Now I don't know. Lowering the importance of hardware and focusing on having their network integrated into other platforms. They should have done this much earlier. It is easy to see the mistakes they made in the past and my complaint about them is that they have a decent play but pass on it -- things get worse -- then six months to a year later they try to implement the play that previously might have helped but now it is too late. Meanwhile as they implement what they should have done a year ago they completely miss another opportunity.

I currently use a N900. It is an orphaned phone that runs a version of unix called Maemo 5. I want to support a start-up and that limits my phone selection somewhat but I'll likely replace it with a Galaxy S III when they becomes available.

It will be interesting to see what happens with TV over the next five years.

There are a lot of parallels with the management issues but Commodore was way ahead of everything else with respect to technology when the company died. RIM has two very specific advantages which are not really something they can build a business on. Once businesses started accepting that other platforms while not as secure as Blackberry offered adequate security there was no reason to use the inferior Blackberry. The second advantage of having superior performance in areas with less robust service isn't a business model and they have to deal with Huawei offering dirt cheap handsets.

for people looking to find a bottom and use the patent portfolio, potential buyout scenario as justifications, nok is much more attractive than rimm. obvious tuck in for microsoft which already has a suprior os than rimm, very good patents, and right now only has an ev of 2 bil

RIM's patents are worth more than $2B.

Their EV is $2.8B as of the current trading price. I haven't done any analysis on this but has EV/Intangible Assets been a good strategy?

I'm already digging further into the possible scenarios for this company and potential break up values for its parts. If you'd like to compare notes, PM me.

well RIMM is getting crushed today . down 18 percent and sliding pretty fast .

Haven't done the analysis yet but i bet until the stock drops below 5 you won't see a good gain on liquidation value. They are slashing costs and have enough cash to last until the new phone arrives.

Why do you think this exactly?

Intangible Assets are listed at $3,372m but I'm exactly sure of everything being added into this line, how it's being accounted for and how it is being valuated. This is where they'd house their patent/IP assets but there could be other assets listed here as well. And then, no idea how they valuate this line.

If you have any insights into this, I'd love to read them. This is something I know little about and would like to learn more.

Valuing patents is extremely difficult which is why there are firms that specialize in that. The last time I saw a valuation was about this time last year and it was $2.5B. That was before Notel's portfolio sold for $4.5B to a consortium of tech companies including RIM. Nortel's portfolio sold for so much more than expected because there has been a paradigm shift in how tech companies value patents. It is very likely that RIM's valuation at $2.5B was low. RIM has a good portfolio of about 2500 patents of which about 900 are extremely valuable and through their participation in the Nortel consortium they have a decent number of patents that are essential to LTE although the value of those are probably fairly negatively impacted by most of the potential buyers also being members of the consortium.

It would be nice to see some of the experts put numbers to what they think the RIM portfolio is worth but they are all being very intentionally vague and avoiding that.

Which company/ies is/are willing to pay $2 bil for these RIM patents? That's the value of the patents.

Google paid ~$5B for Motorola's patents. Patents are extremely popular.

Makes me feel really good about what I'm doing.

I'm going home.