When you look into tech news recently one story or in the case company will stand out beyond the rest. RIM or Research In Motion the creators of the Blackberry smartphone seem to be in the news daily. While the reasons they are in the media merit the coverage the amount and how much media companies have run with it is extremely questionable. It seems that almost everyday or anything said will be front page in the tech section and sometimes make the front page. Blog after blog and even professional journalists digging deeper into a story and coming out with a completely wrong outcome. Now there are stories that need to be run with and being Canada’s biggest tech company it draws extra attention.
– RIM’s stock was and is an important story but now it has passed the residual book value and the shareholders meeting, if your not a share holder it means little. The numerous blogs and stories about the loss of share value are completely useless and focuses on a past company that has gone through significant changes. These types of stories shouldn’t come back into the press until the shareholder meeting, a company plans a takeover or RIM plans to go private.
– RIM’s financial numbers while important in the short term and for those paying attention to the company long term aren’t headline tech news or front page news. Unless RIM is announcing a bankruptcy then I’m not sure why this is really necessary for the news. The company has shown time and time again that its moving to a new platform and that its taking a lot of money and time to do so. In the mean time there sales are dropping due to a lack of new/interesting phones on the market. Yet, the titles “RIM is dead” or “RIM’s death spiral” continue to light the blog boards.
It really amazes me that the North American media pays such attention to RIM besides the fact its in transition and has made some serious misjudgements is in good position globally. It has 2.2 billion in cash, 0 debt and in number 1 in many of the developing countries. These facts continue to allude people when they write articles about RIM but what else is going on in the tech world also seems to disappear after the news hits.
Nokia was once the biggest phone manufacturer in all of the world and was one of the bigger employers in Finland. With the transition to smart phones from feature phones, Nokia failed to pay attention. They have lost billions of dollars and even last quarter (3 months) they lost 1 billion. But yet the media and the company found silver linings in the news and it was out of the media within hours. In that quarter Nokia moved the last plant out of Finland and into the developing nations, a story which likely received attention in Finland but did nothing for North American media. To Finland the company has the same recognition as GM, now imagine if GM moved all its plants to Mexico the media attention that would get!
HTC is another company running Google’s Android operating system. They make good phone and were extremely successful for a number of years. It really didn’t start having problems till Samsung released the extremely popular Galaxy S2 and Galaxy Note. Since then the company has been pushed out of markets by Samsung and there phones are having a huge issue of recognition after the media campaign by Samsung. Why isn’t HTC in the news more then the few hours after there market share numbers are released or the new quarterly report? If they continue, the company could be relegated to a much smaller market share or be squeezed out of the market by Samsung and other cheap phone manufacturers. HTC is a fairly big company and to be squeezed out of that market would be a huge story for the media but it seems like no one cares.
Sony doesn’t have the market share of RIM or any of the major companies but yet its smart phone division has been losing cash like they been wiping there ass with it. Apple has the Foxxconn issues and the legal battles with Samsung that never make more then a bloggers front page.
So why RIM, is it just an easy company to hate on as people moved from Blackberries to iphones, galaxy etc? Is it the way it fell or how it fell? Is it because it was Canada’s shining star in the tech world?
Leave your comments in the section below, what you think.
Open minded Millenial perspective - OMMP 
Excellent article. Very well written.
It amazes me how media, specially tech blogs, love to kill RIM even before it is dead. I’m begining to believe that a lot of this press is #paidmedia. Is it apple or samsung or just plain stupid journalism? I don’t know.
RIM, in my opinion, has shown a lot of character. It was so easy to go the android or WP8 way. Instead they choose to fight it the hard way. This is a company with lot of ethics. To give an example, RIM is trying to help employees they laid off. How many companies do this. Yet media focuses on how to kill RIM. And for the record I’m not canadian.
#blackberrybychoice
Thanks, I’m not English major by a long shot so I’m sure there is more the a fair share of mistakes in it.
In my opinion if RIM had gone Android it would have failed. HTC is already fighting for survival and there isn’t money to be made unless your Samsung. Windows could be a different story but its still have major issues getting traction and even with the cash influx of Microsoft, Nokia is struggling.
I don’t know if the media is paid but it might be laziness. Kinda of like ragging on the military in the 90’s, it was easy and lots of people agreed with getting on it. Hopefully with some better news they will be able to get out of the spotlight but it might continue to be a pain for them with 2 hard quarters coming up.
Thanks, again.