Early Thursday, Boy Genius Report refuted that story. Citing an unnamed "high-level RIM employee," BGR said that the real reason for the BlackBerry 10 delay is that RIM doesn't have a working product.
RIM immediately denied the substance of the article, telling us and other members of the press that "the anonymous claim ... is inaccurate and uninformed." The company went on to reiterate its position that it "will not launch BlackBerry 10 devices until we know they are ready and we believe this new chip set architecture is required to deliver the world class user experience that our customers will expect."
So who is lying and who is telling the truth -- and more importantly -- does it matter? I don't think it does. The reason behind the BlackBerry 10 delay isn't particularly interesting to me -- though I get the sense that even if the LTE chipsets RIM wanted were available today, BlackBerry 10 devices would still be a year away -- but the delay itself is indicative of just how perilous RIM's current position is.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about RIM and its current situation, and no matter how I imagine various scenarios, I just can't see a positive outcome. After sitting idle for years, RIM gave up its position as smartphone leader to Apple and Google. Already, developer sentiment toward Windows Phone matches or exceeds sentiment regarding the BlackBerry. This is a real problem.
Negative Momentum and Depressing Financials
2011 was not a good year for RIM. RIM's entry to the tablet game got off to a rocky start, after the PlayBook failed to impress. This led to slow sales, cancelled partnerships and zero developer interest. RIM didn't help matters by shipping the device without native email and then postponing the promised update several times.
On the phone front, BlackBerry 7 could have been called BlackBerry 6.1. BlackBerry handsets have routinely lagged behind their competitors in the past, and now they continue to fail to keep up with current-generation Android or iOS devices.
This has all has a profoundly negative effect on RIM's bottom line.
As RIM defenders and BlackBerry loyalists like to point out, RIM is still a profitable company. However, its profits are on the decline. Moreover, just because the volume of devices shipped increases (or remains steady) does not mean a company is not in trouble. Volume != profit. Just ask Nokia.
Dan Frommer and Horace Dediu ably and astutely dissected, analyzed and graphed out RIM's financial situation, so I won't reinvent the wheel by doing my own. Suffice to say, without a killer new product, RIM's profitability looks anything but secure.
A Dying Platform
In October 2010, product and marketing strategist Michael Mace wrote a prophetic article entitled "What's Really Wrong with BlackBerry." In his article, Mace outlines how computing platforms die -- pointing to small declines in growth of sales and gross profit per unit sold. Mace's post is worth reading because 14 months later, his predictions perfectly match what has happened in the market and to RIM's customer base.
As a former BlackBerry user, I've carefully watched the BlackBerry decline over the last few years. The iPhone didn't become a lethal threat to the BlackBerry until July, 2008. When the App Store opened, the entire game changed. As a diehard BlackBerry user at that time, I bought an iPod Touch and was immediately blown away by the disparity between the first generation of iPhone apps and those available for BlackBerry.
Surely, I thought, RIM is going to do something to improve its app situation. It's going to invest in better tools, beef up its underlying infrastructure and try to poach better developers. Right?
Wrong.
Instead, I watched as RIM ignored the current app situation, denied that there was a problem and continued to tout its dominance in the enterprise. The only problem, of course, was that BlackBerry's dominance on the enterprise started to slip. Apple's iOS 2.0 introduced Exchange support, and by 2009, getting corporate email on an iPhone was just as easy as getting it on a BlackBerry. I finally left the BlackBerry in 2009 as it became apparent that apps would never be a focus for RIM.
Millions of others in the U.S. made the same decision I made -- including our Editor-in-Chief Lance Ulanoff. RIM still has strong sales in some emerging markets -- but again, volume doesn't equal profit. Just ask Nokia.
Silver Lining
The promise of QNX, the operating system RIM bought in 2010, was that its infrastructure and nature would make it ideal to use and augment on a plethora of devices.
With QNX, RIM was hoping to do what Apple did with the acquisition of NeXT: Create a next-generation operating system to replace the dead-end system in the current product line.
That promise still exists and QNX still has potential. Unfortunately for RIM, that potential depends on how quickly the company can get QNX-powered components on the market and how well RIM can build out its basic devices software.