Whats that about being able to upgrade at no additional cost? They were planing to charge us for OS 2.0 ???

no, they're just trying to appear generous ;)

No OS2 will be free, same as every other OS update, it was just worded in a way that could let trolls talk crap.

2012 = The year of RIM.!!

Ps: Everywhere I go, people are talking about the playbook. In my own office, there is over a dozen new playbook users alone. RIM's strategy worked, everybody is getting onboard. Go RIM!!!

Another fucking guidance down!!!! Jesus do they need to take a couse in managing expectations 101!!!

Now that my day has started off crappy I get to look forward to hearing JimB throw out all those useless buzzwords during the next qtr conference call.

Well hopefully they gain the foothold in the tablet market that they want. Also I wouldn't mind they stick with the promotional price of the playbook, as I am still yet without one. *keep fingers crossed*.

RIM only has another couple of quarters at most, of overpromise/underdeliver, before the dastardly duo will be ousted by investors. It all looks unremittingly grim.

Deja vu..

It would help if they'd ship the playbook I ordered over a week ago.

time to sell out

i enjoy the line, "Company now believes that an increase in promotional activity is required to drive sell-through to end customers.". I find this important to note out simply because it feels like the PlayBook was not marketed in the US hard enough. So maybe there is some potential left in RIM, although i must say it should not have taken a quarter or to to realize the needed amount of marketing.

Hope this strategy works. Wish I had waited until now to buy my Playbook 64GB. Oh well. I wonder if OS2 will be even later now because of this announcement.

It's beginning to look a lot like christmas!
Thank you Lazaridis!!!!!
Short $RIMM

They just like to admit that they're always a step behind. We already knew all this. Of course it was more expensive than people were willing to pay for what they got in return, of course you didn't market or promote it well enough.

I just hope that they appreciate their early adopters.

Disappointing news for the company but at least their cash line increased by $80 million. RIM is still a profitable company and even if there are less of us using it, it is still the one for me.

I still love my Bold 9930 more than any other device out there.

No surprise here, that's why the stock is where it is. Playbook is selling but at $200, there is no money being made.

And the stock price keeps the slide down.

"The Company is still in the process of finalizing its fourth quarter outlook, and based on preliminary estimates, RIM expects unit shipments in the fourth quarter to be below third quarter levels. "

Are they talking just PlayBook or all devices? For them to sell fewer phones in the 4th Quarter than they did in the previous quarter after the release of all the new OS7 devices,....????

Earnings were $1.20 a share. The write down is non-cash!!!!

So they produce a playbook at $200 and register an account receivable of $500 (minus retail)
When they sell the playbook at $200, they must record a charge of $300. It's not an actual cash loss.

Stupid US media is reporting that Rim lost $486 million! The bright side is that they are getting playbooks into people's hands at no cost to them.. Good strategy to lift BBX (more apps, more pleased customers considering the bbx). Would be nice if they sold the playbook at $500 but considering the competition, they are doing well with the cards they are dealt.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that RIM should have stayed out of the tablet game and focused on what they are good at - phones and enterprise.

Well, I am buying some more shares of RIMM. I am risking that RIMM is going to turn it around for 2012. At the current stock prices, now is the time to purchase. PlayBooks are getting into consumer hands, OS7 devices are selling well, BBX and 2.0 are coming! RIMM is transitioning to begin to reclaim some lost territory. At these prices for RIMM stock, all it takes is a little improvement to have a big impact on profit for the investor.

I like how the author fails to mention that RIM missed their guidance & just reworded it in a way to avoid that fact! RIM-lovers, keep-up the "delusional" behaviour, you're clearly doing GREAT!!!

ouch.. .stock already down almost 10%

16.83 -1.75 (-9.42%) 9:53AM EST

To "SBMobile3" .............we all get that you hate RIM. Now take a break. Thanks

Phone sales in line with estimates but the play book wasnt. Like this is a shock. Is anyone really surprised? Anyone other then Apple selling a pad device has been a loser! Any tablet/pad manufacturer is going to get killed making them, they have no choice, Apple has a stranglehold on the consumer in a way that every other company wishes.

Good to see there handset sales are in line, but a slow in sales for there Q4 isnt good. Hopefully they underestimate and the new releases pick up the slack.

Not good

Does anyone really care about this? It's all going to come down to the QNX phone and that's it. This information, playbook selling or not is chump change compared to phones.

I'm not even sure the stock price should go down. By going down we assume that investors really thought the playbooks would sell at the prices they were at?? Were they dreaming??

To me the write down represents an investment in the future of the QNX OS. They need the tablets in more hands to attract developers to the eco-system.

But again it really comes down to theQNX phones and that's it.

rim its time to release APPS dont sell devices, SECURITY does not sell devices. BRAND does, common lets admit this mistake. You're week's gains have all been wiped out in a single day. stop this madness and stick to what you're good at . Build your brand!

Bye bye RIM. It was nice knowing you.

Actually iP*d is the only maker who is making money from this tablet business...

This proves that the PlayBook was a monumental mistake, the co-CEO's put the *entire* company's resources into developing a tablet that was late, incomplete, with little or no App developer support.

And the consequences and opportunity costs of this huge blunder?

a) The *entire* portfolio of BlackBerry Smartphones were delayed: Bold 9900, Torch 9810, and Torch 9860. Sales are down. (Heck, some countries in Asia cannot buy the Torch 9810 yet, while the Torch 9860 had just been launched last week !!)

b) The QNX platform/brand had been tarnished (dare I suggest QNX name damaged), with a number of developers shunning support for PlayBook/QNX platform outright. (Now you know why BlackBerry called it the BBX and not the QNX.)

c) RIM risks being in no-mans-land, risking alienating existing Java developers for BlackBerry OS7 feel like second class citizens, with RIM giving no conversion tools to port their applications to the new BBX platform. Pity they have to write the application from scratch.

So with little support for future QNX/BBX, and existing Java developers don't see the future of BlackBerry OS7, RIM is actually *losing* what traction left in its App store.

d) RIM/BlackBerry had also entirely missed the boat in the App-commerce that had now spring up, here in Asia many companies are expanding their business by launching Apps for both Android and iPhone/iPad--and none for BlackBerry at all. This was because RIM/BlackBerry had entirely missed the boat in being late to market with the OS7 series of smartphones, costing BlackBerry dearly in market/App momentum.

e) In retrospect, RIM should have launched the OS7 series of smartphones (its bread and butter portfolio and money maker) in early 2011, and then launch its PlayBook tablet afterwards. ie: co-CEO's got the launch order backwards, and in the process damaging *both* the QNX name and also damaging the OS7 market position.
(I for one strongly felt RIM should have launched its OS7 smartphones first, and this was back in Sept/Oct 2010 when the PlayBook was announced. Common sense.)

~So what is the point? The entire company's direction was serious wrong, and who is ultimately responsible for this? The co-CEO's, and the entire senior management of RIM. CEO's have been replaced for lesser sins than the blunders mentioned above...

You"ll see the PlayBook going for $149 or even $99 bucks soon.........

The math doesn't add up.

485,000,000/150,000 is 3233.33 lost per tablet sold into channels.

Someone on another site told me they actually moved 800,000 units, but even that shows a loss of $606.25/tablet.

The $485M relates to stuff that RIM still holds in its warehouses, i.e. inventory. Whatever's been sold has moved into the income statement line item Cost of Goods Sold.

Example for 1 Playbook selling at original MSRP (made-up numbers):

Revenue: $400 (let's call it $499 less the margin they gave the retailer, at full price)
Cost: $300
Gross Profit: $100

Now, with the deep discount:

Revenue: $200 (call it $260 [current Amazon price] less margin)
Cost: $300 (unchanged, prior to write-down)
Gross profit: -$100

Instead of losing on every future sale now that it's been determined that $250-300 will be the near-term price point for the rest of the inventory, RIM's going to write down what's left in the warehouses so that they take the hit up front, and then make a few bucks/break even the rest of the way. In my example, they'd need the inventory cost to come down to $200 to break even. Let's say they conservatively mark down each unit's inventory cost by $150 to bring it down from $300 to $150.

Per unit = $150. Assume 3M units in warehouses, the write-down needed for all of them would be about $150 x 3 = $450M. We're not gonna be able to verify the exact numbers since RIM doesn't break out inventory costs by model (phone, tablet, etc), but the rough math I sketched out seems to make sense to the first order.

If this isn't I crime for a ceo change I don't know what is

I hope RIM recovers from any shet their in #RIMPIRE

RIM is going down. They have outdated handsets, a failed tablet, and inconsistent plans for the future. 2012 is the year RIM gets out of the hardware business, especially when the hardware business means losing half a billion dollars.

Ha, no way am I going to pay for firmware updates :P

When I was in XXXXXXX a number of years back, I was pretty shocked at seeing two large groups of men and women get into a raucous brawl because one side thought Ford was better than Holden, and the other side did not agree at all. It was very violent, bloody, and I was scared. People were taken to hospital. All that over two different brands of automobile!

Is this the direction we're heading with regard to mobile phones? Some of the posters on this site really go out of their way to put RIM and its products down. Just because you like your iphone/android, doesn't mean blackberry sucks. Just because I like my blackberry, doesn't mean I think the iphone sucks.