Seas boiling! Skies falling! The dead rising from the grave! Yes, we are all
sensitive to apocalyptic and eerie portents and signs on Halloween. That looming
dread is part of the fun. Its a great counterpoint to the sugar-rush/comedown
portion of the holiday. Horror, then sweets goes the formula. The world might
not be ending and the dead might not be rising from the grave on Halloween 2011,
but for some technology businesses, it certainly feels that way. As the year
careens to a close, consumer spending remains tepid and the competitive
landscape in a number of technologies especially mobile devices is changing
with alarming speed. If Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL ) and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG ) are the
happy trick-or-treaters in tech, then who are the publicly traded ghouls and
goblins of the day? Consider these lost souls: Research In Motion Can changing
tastes and an unwillingness to change be considered a curse? Judging from the
companys performance over the past 12 months, it certainly seems that Research
In Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM ) is living under a bad moon. The BlackBerry maker has
seen share prices crumble from $70 in February to below $21 as of Monday. The
pre-crash trading price of $145, hit around July 2008, seems a distant memory.
While RIM didnt diss a gypsy queen to earn its declining fate, it has failed to
transform its smartphone business and enterprise services into competitive
products that can go head-to-head with Apples popular products or the openness
of Google Android-powered devices. RIMs share of the global smartphone market
shrank from 19% to 14% over the past year . It isnt coming back, either.
Research firm IDC expects that share to shrink to 13% by 2015. RIMs lonely
future is to be devoured by a competitor for its juicy patents .
No comments:
Post a Comment