COMMENT

BlackBerry is up for sale, and it looks like the only way to get the most bang for the buck will be to break up Canada’s most famous technology company and sell it off for parts.

What most people envision when they think of BlackBerry — its division that makes and sells its once ubiquitous smartphones — is, in the eyes of many, worth less than zero.

Rather it’s the company’s bank account, its library of technology patents and the enterprise division that provides security technology to governments and Fortune 500 companies that might have the best chance of making potential buyers open their wallets.

Breaking up the company and selling it for parts appears to be the most profitable and logical future for the company formerly known as Research in Motion after it announced Monday that it is creating a special committee to examine “strategic alternatives.”

That’s the business world equivalent of including “no reasonable offer refused” in a classified ad.

Add up the company’s two most liquid assets and a grim picture appears.

At the end of June, BlackBerry was debt-free and sitting on a pile of cash and investments worth about US$3.1-billion. Tack on the company’s sizable portfolio of patents — estimated to be worth between US$2-billion and US$3-billion — and you get to roughly the company’s current market capitalization.

To the market, the value of all of BlackBerry’s best software, devices, services, real estate and employees are cancelled out by their potential liability.

Still, it’s nothing short of a tragedy that perhaps the best way to maximize what little shareholder value can be salvaged from BlackBerry is through breaking up a company that was once the crown jewel of Canada’s business community.

For several years, BlackBerry’s leadership promised the Waterloo, Ont., tech firm was on the verge of a turnaround, after falling from its perch atop the smartphone world in the face of overwhelming competition from Apple Inc.’s iPhone and devices running on Google Inc.’s Android software.

But the turnaround was always just around the corner and just out of reach. Even a leadership change, which saw the departure of co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, couldn’t seem to reverse BlackBerry’s slide.

Earlier this year, the company released a line of smartphones running on a new software platform known as BlackBerry 10 (BB10). It was a make or break move, a last ditch effort to try to pull even with Apple and Android, or at least return to relevance in the smartphone world.

Monday’s announcement would seem to be an admission that the Hail Mary pass didn’t work.

Sales of BB10 devices haven’t met expectations, the company’s market share keeps sliding and shareholders have continued to punish the company’s stock, which today is worth a fraction of what it was at its peak.

Now, BlackBerry chief executive Thorsten Heins and board chairwoman Barbara Stymiest are looking for a new Plan B, and it appears all options are on the table.

Of course, since BlackBerry is at least thinking about selling, the first question is: who would buy it?

As of Monday evening, BlackBerry was worth about US$5.7-billion (based on the company’s market capitalization), but any suitor hoping to scoop it up on the open market would likely end up paying a premium over that price.

This leaves only a handful of technology companies with the necessary financial wherewithal to acquire a company like BlackBerry, and many of those are competitors who already have their own smartphone platforms, such as Apple, Google and Microsoft (the first, third and fifth most valuable companies on Earth).

Other global technology giants including IBM or even Samsung — a company that in the past denied rumours it was interested in acquiring BlackBerry — certainly have the financial resources to buy BlackBerry, and the acquisition might make more strategic sense. But just because they have the means doesn’t mean they suddenly have the will to make such a deal happen.

Another option for BlackBerry would be to find investors willing to take the company private and give management time to put the BlackBerry brand back on track far away from the curious eyes of investors on Bay Street and Wall Street.

Fuelling speculation that going private might be near the top of the list of Plan B alternatives, Prem Watsa, the CEO and chairman of Fairfax Financial and one of Canada’s takeover kings, stepped down from his seat on BlackBerry’s board of directors on Monday.

At least a couple of Canadian pensions plans have said they would look at taking a stake if such a deal made sense, so we could even have a Made In Canada privatization plan.

But even then, there is little reason to think a group of Canadian capitalists would be so patriotic as to spend billions all at once just

to lose more as the company dwindles in the most competitive business in decades against the most valuable companies on Earth.

Such a group, like the one that saved the Toronto Stock Exchange from foreign clutches, may even be able to salvage a chunk of the existing operations, but that is still a tall order.

The real tragedy of BlackBerry is that for all its missteps, the company achieved a level of success and international recognition that few Canadian firms have ever achieved, and continues to make products that are used and loved by more than 72 million people around the world.

Regardless of what happens to the company in the coming months, there will still be people using the products and services created by BlackBerry for years to come.

For BlackBerry, the same tidal wave of mobile communications the company rode to become the darling device of Parliament Hill, Washington D.C., Bay Street and Wall Street is the same one that came crashing down when momentum shifted in favour of its much larger competitors.

While the future for BlackBerry remains uncertain, it would now appear that even the company now knows that major change is inevitable.

BlackBerry’s first ever Super Bowl Commercial will feature a puff of coloured smoke. This much we know.

On Friday, the company formerly known as Research In Motion Ltd. gave BlackBerry fans a small peek at a still image from its first ever Super Bowl commercial.

Unfortunately, the image offers little additional information about the Waterloo, Ont.-based company’s forthcoming advertising blitz to promote its new BlackBerry 10 (BB10) operating system and the Z10, the first next generation BlackBerry smartphone to be powered by the new software.

“This unique execution will be part of a broad marketing campaign about the totally re-designed, re-engineered and re-invented BlackBerry,” the company said in an email.

RIM officially rebranded itself as simply “BlackBerry” earlier this week at a splashy New York media event to officially launch the BlackBerry 10 platform and the first two devices to run on the new software.

BlackBerry is set to embark on a major advertising campaign to promote the Z10, which launches in Canada next week and will go on sale in the United States in mid-March.

Over the past year since taking over as chief executive, Thorsten Heins and his team at BlackBerry have worked to roughly double the company’s cash position to US$2.9-billion, in part to fund the company’s advertising war chest as it seeks to drum up support for BB10.

BlackBerry officials have identified success in the coveted U.S. smartphone market — a market RIM once dominated but where the company has since fallen behind Apple’s iPhone and devices running Google Inc.’s Android software — as key to any potential turnaround.

BlackBerry has been relatively tight lipped about its advertising strategy, which will face stiff competition from the world beating marketing of rival Apple Inc., and will be going head to head for Super Bowl attention with a new ad from Samsung Electronics Corp. featuring Hollywood actors Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd.

“The idea for the marketing for BB10 is really to put the device and the product experience in the hands of BlackBerry fans and let them be delighted by the experience and then talk about it,” RIM’s chief marketing officer Frank Boulben said in a recent interview with the Financial Post.

“We have a clear audience in mind,” he said. “Users who have three main characteristics … they are hyper-connected, they are multi-taskers and they are about getting things done. They are doers. Achievers.”

When Research in Motion Ltd. officially renamed itself BlackBerry on Wednesday, it joined a long list of companies who have changed their names in an attempt to reinvigorate the brand and drive its share price higher.

But history shows that name changes don’t always coincide with success on equity markets.

Slate magazine posted an article on Thursday noting a study of U.K. corporations that showed name-changers underperform compared with the overall stock market by almost 10% over the three years following the switch.

The article went on to say that corporations with falling stock prices prior to a name change perform even worse in the three years afterward, “in part because the move smacks of desperation to investors.”

Here in North America, the historical evidence suggesting name changes are ineffective is less convincing – at least for the following four companies:

Dayton Hudson Corp. changed its name to Target Corp. in August 2000. Target stock is up about 160% since then versus a flat S&P 500.

Philip Morris Companies Inc. changed its name to Altria Group Inc. on January 2003. Shares in the world’s largest cigarette maker have gained roughly 275% since then, while the broader market has jumped 85%.

Brascan Corp. changed its name to Brookfield Asset Management Inc. at the end of 2005. BAM is approximately 60% following the name change compared to 15% for the S&P/TSX composite index.

Gammon Gold Inc. was renamed AuRico Gold in May 2011. The name change has coincided with a roughly 30% drop in the stock versus a drop of 6% for the TSX over the same period.

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Hockey fans who pick up a BlackBerry 10 Z10 smartphone when it launches in Canada next week will be able to get their NHL fix on the latest device from the company formerly known as Research In Motion Ltd.

On Thursday, the National Hockey League announced it has created a new version of its NHL GameCenter application for the BB10 platform. The league said the application is expected to be available when the Z10 launches in Canada on Feb. 5.

The free version of NHL’s GameCenter application provides fans with live scores and stats from NHL games, as well as post game video highlights. Premium versions of the application offer fans access to live radio streams and video streaming of out of market games.

The NHL joins Major League Baseball on the list of the major professional sports leagues to support the Waterloo, Ont.-based company’s new mobile software.

Support from third party application developers will be critical to the success of BlackBerry 10. BlackBerry officials said the company expects to have roughly 70,000 applications in the BlackBerry World app store when the full touchscreen Z10 device goes on sale next week in Canada, and more than 100,000 by the time the device goes on sale in the United States in mid-March.

The application storefronts supporting Apple Inc.’s iOS platform and Google Inc.’s Android platform both feature roughly 700,000 downloadable applications.

RIM officially changed its corporate name to BlackBerry at an unveiling event for its new smartphones on Wednesday.

BlackBerry and the NHL announced the two organizations would be “renewing” their North American partnership. The new deal includes advertising, including positioning BlackBerry as the lead sponsor on the NHL’s trade deadline coverage on April 3, 2013.

NHL’s GameCenter application is already available on Apple’s iOS platform and Google’s Android software.

Research In Motion Ltd. trotted out its new BlackBerry 10 operating system and two new smartphones in New York on Wednesday. RIM, taking the name of its best-known product, will now be known simply as BlackBerry, part of a comeback plan that includes unveiling a redesigned line of smartphones today. Check out our gallery from the launch below.

Research In Motion Ltd. finally unveiled BlackBerry 10 and its first two next-generation smartphones Wednesday as the embattled phone maker looks to turn around its fortunes.

While the operating system and devices have been much anticipated, one of the biggest surprises the Waterloo, Ont.-based company offered at the announcement was the death of its name. “From this point forward, RIM becomes Blackberry,” CEO Thorsten Heins said early in the event.

The company will now trade under BBRY on the Nasdaq and BB on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Although RIM shares had gained as much as 4% ahead of the launch in Wednesday morning trading, the stock later fell 7% from Tuesday’s closing price shortly after noon ET, to about $14.50 on the TSX following the presentation.

Among the features touted at Wednesday’s event:

— As you type, the operating system predicts what word you want and you can swipe to have it auto-completed.

— BlackBerry Hub acts as one place for all incoming messages, email, BBM, social media.

— BlackBerry Balance then allows one phone to operate as both a business and personal device entirely separate from each other.

— Apps have been divided into two sections by tabs at the top of the screen, labelled Personal and Work.

— The new BlackBerry will also let users seamlessly shift between the phone’s applications like they’re flipping between pages on a desk.

Relive FP’s coverage of the BlackBerry 10 launches in New York and Toronto in reverse chronological order below.

TORONTO — Research In Motion Ltd. was gearing up for a technological “leapfrog” of its smartphone industry peers – or so Jim Balsillie boasted back in October 2011.

At the time Mr. Balsillie, then co-chief executive of the BlackBerry maker, was on something of a damage control tour after an outage that left millions of disgruntled users without access to their email and other messages.

For RIM, the service disruption was just the latest headache in a disastrous year of disappointing financial results, the largest round of layoffs in the company’s history and the underwhelming launch of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, all of which had sent RIM’s share price into a tailspin.

Despite RIM’s struggles, Mr. Balsillie preached that the patience of shareholders and BlackBerry fans would be rewarded, though it might appear that things were looking bad for the Waterloo, Ont. company — it was just a transition phase. Brighter days were just around the corner or at worst just over the horizon.

In fact, the beginning of that turnaround would be on display the very next day at RIM’s annual developer conference in California, he promised.

“We’ve leapfrogged everyone with what we’re announcing tomorrow and you’re going to see it on display,” Mr. Balsillie said at the time.

“This is what we do and it’s a couple-year exercise and it’s hard to do… but you have to chart a direction and you have to stick to it and let the results speak for themselves.”

The next day, RIM announced BBX — since renamed BlackBerry 10 — to the world.

And the world waited.

Now, 15 long and tumultuous months later, Mr. Balsillie may no longer be in charge of RIM but the vision he revealed back then is finally set to become a reality.

On Wednesday morning, the moment toward which RIM has been building for roughly two years will finally arrive when new chief executive Thorsten Heins takes the stage in New York City to officially unveil BlackBerry 10.

It’s a landmark moment for RIM, the Canadian mobility pioneer whose BlackBerrys once defined the smartphone market but have fallen out of favour with consumers in the face of overwhelming competition from Apple Inc.’s iPhone and devices running Google Inc.’s Android software.

It may even be RIM’s make-or-break moment.

The public unveiling of the wholly redesigned BlackBerry 10 operating system — as well as the first two next-generation BlackBerry smartphones to be powered by the software ­— represents the embattled Waterloo, Ont.-based technology giant’s best chance for a comeback.

It’s also something of a fresh start, a wiping away of the tarnish RIM’s image has acquired in recent years. A chance to change RIM’s public perception as a company prone to product delays and paste over embarrassing PR gaffes that made it the brunt of media jokes and the target of Wall Street analysts’ ire.

But Wednesday’s BlackBerry 10 event isn’t a finish line for RIM, rather a starting gate.

RIM has made BlackBerry 10 a reality, a feat that many observers never expected to happen. Now, RIM needs to get it into the hands of its users — not to mention hopefully stopping its followers from drifting away to iPhones and Galaxys.

As difficult as the past two years have been for the Waterloo, Ont. company, the real challenge for RIM lies in finding a market for BlackBerry 10 and re-establishing itself as a major player in a market it once defined but is now ruled by some of the world’s largest and most powerful corporations.

If the leaked previews and early reviews of RIM’s new BlackBerry smartphones are to be believed, the devices will likely find a measure of success. Celebrities on Twitter are extolling their love of the new BlackBerrys and RIM is already earning kudos from analysts for its new touchscreen keyboard, as well as its Hub and BlackBerry Balance features.

There should be enough pent up demand from existing BlackBerry users looking to upgrade to boost RIM’s sales above the 6.9 million BlackBerrys the company sold in its most recent quarter.

But will the countless hours RIM spent developing BlackBerry 10 be enough to get teenagers, working moms and executives to pick up a BlackBerry instead of an iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy S3 while standing in a Future Shop or Rogers store?

The two new BlackBerrys — one with a full touchscreen, and another featuring RIM’s iconic QWERTY tactile keyboard — should provide the company with some momentum, but how it builds upon the early buzz of BlackBerry 10 may determine its fate.

At launch, there are expected to be more than 70,000 applications in RIM’s recently renamed application storefront, BlackBerry World. Some developers will likely be waiting to see how RIM’s new devices resonate with consumers before deciding whether or not to buy into the platform.

RIM has offered up few details about its marketing plans, but revealed last week that it will run its first Super Bowl commercial during the big game this Sunday. As usual, RIM’s marketing efforts will be pitted against Apple’s world-renowned advertising power and a new Samsung campaign that takes a swipe at RIM.

RIM officials have been busy increasing the company’s cash position — which stands at roughly US$2.9-billion — which will be used, in part, to help fund RIM’s BlackBerry 10 marketing war chest in the months ahead.

But what will RIM’s product cycle look like now that it’s armed with a new platform? Will the company follow an Apple-esque model with one new phone each year, or choose a different path, expanding the BlackBerry portfolio with new devices, such as a slider Torch-like device, or a larger phablet-style phone?

Of course, RIM’s competitors won’t be caught standing still. Apple will certainly launch at least one new iPhone in 2013, while unconfirmed rumours suggest the Cupertino, California computing giant may be preparing multiple new devices.

Over the past four quarters, RIM has shipped approximately 33 million BlackBerrys. Meanwhile, Apple shipped 47.8 million iPhones in its most recent quarter alone.

On the Android front, Korea’s Samsung is expected to be gearing up for the launch of the Galaxy S4, while Google’s Motorola Mobility subsidiary is said to be working on a high-end device known internally as the “X Phone,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Then there’s the Nokia Oyj and Microsoft Corp. Lumia-Windows Phone alliance, which is dead set on outflanking RIM to become the No. 3 smartphone brand behind Apple and Android.

Needless to say, RIM faces stiff competition.

But the questions surrounding RIM don’t end there. RIM officials have repeatedly said that BlackBerry 10 is about more than just smartphones, and that the platform will one day power a range of electronic devices. Which leads us to wonder what RIM has planned for its much maligned PlayBook tablet. Mr. Heins has said RIM is committed to the PlayBook, but the company sold only 255,000 units of its touchscreen tablet in the most recent quarter.

Then there’s the matter of the forthcoming changes to RIM’s services business which caused shares of RIM to dive last month. On its most recent earnings call, RIM said users who want enhanced offerings like advanced security will continue to pay a fee and others who opt out of those services will “generate less or no service revenue” according to Mr. Heins.

While the spotlight remains squarely focused on BlackBerry 10, lurking in the shadows is the lingering possibility that RIM could wind up being a takeover target. Last week, the CFO of Lenovo intimated that the Chinese computer maker was looking at RIM, among others, for a possible strategic alliance or acquisition.

It was rumoured that several companies kicked the tires on RIM regarding a potential acquisition during the company’s disastrous 2011, and Mr. Heins and his team are continuing their “strategic review” of RIM’s business, which could result in any number of scenarios, from the company licensing its software to other manufacturers or the sale of specific business units.

On Wednesday, RIM will stand firmly in the spotlight as the company stakes its claim to a new beginning. Despite the positive momentum and significant buzz surrounding the company, it still faces monumental challenges.

Indeed, the next chapter of Canada’s most famous technology company begins on Wednesday, and has yet to be written. But to paraphrase Mr. Balsillie, the results will speak for themselves.

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WATERLOO — There was a moment during the pomp and circumstance of his second inauguration earlier this week when U.S. President Barack Obama was pictured pulling out what appeared to be his specially secured BlackBerry smartphone to check his messages.

While President Obama may be the most famous BlackBerry user in the world, the image was a stark reminder of how Research In Motion Ltd.’s iconic smartphones have become a staple of the halls of power in Washington, on Wall Street and in corporations around the world.

Indeed, there are still many who immediately associate RIM’s BlackBerry devices with the worlds of business and government, and those corporate users figure to factor heavily into the long term survival of Canada’s most famous technology company.

Now, as RIM prepares for the biggest product launch in its history next week, the Waterloo, Ont.-based company is not only hoping to capture the imagination of average consumers with its new BlackBerry 10 platform, but is also reaching out to its core enterprise user base in the hopes of restoring its image as the device of choice for serious business users.

On Jan. 30, RIM will officially unveil BlackBerry 10 and the first two BlackBerry smartphones to run on the new operating system, and the company is hoping sales of those devices will be bolstered by corporate users upgrading their existing BlackBerry devices.

Last week, RIM said that more than 1,600 enterprise customers have signed up for a training program designed to familiarize IT departments with the new BlackBerry 10 software and smartphones.

But just as RIM’s smartphones have fallen out of favour in the U.S. smartphone market as consumers migrate to Apple Inc.’s iPhones and devices running Google Inc.’s Android software, RIM is also feeling the heat in the enterprise world, where its chief rivals continue to make inroads.

While RIM chief executive Thorsten Heins has said in the past that 90% of Fortune 500 companies still use BlackBerry technology, Apple officials regularly tout the growing number that are testing or have deployed iPhones and iPad tablets.

As well, earlier this week, Samsung Venture Investment Corp. purchased a stake in Fixmo Inc., a Canadian security software maker, as the Korean electronics giant moves to expand its portfolio of enterprise offerings.

“Enterprise has always been a key part of our business at RIM,” Jeff Holleran, RIM’s senior director of enterprise product management, said in an interview.

“We’ve worked with some of the same people at the same companies for a good, solid dozen years now of building out these enterprise services … You’ve seen RIM transform what we’re doing for the enterprise, based on what those customers have asked us to do.”

RIM’s CEO has previously identified enterprise users as a priority for RIM, having said in the past that the company missed the boat on the “bring your own device” movement, which has seen corporate smartphone users begin using personal iPhone and Android devices on company networks.

Last year, RIM introduced a new service known as Mobile Fusion, which enabled corporate IT departments to manage and secure iOS and Android devices in addition to RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones and tablets. On Wednesday, RIM announced that IT managers could now download BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, which expands on Mobile Fusion by also enabling IT departments to manage BlackBerry 10 devices.

One of the key features of BlackBerry 10 that was designed to help IT departments deal with the BYOD trend is BlackBerry Balance, a software feature that allows users to have both a personal profile and corporate profile on the same device, which is already generating positive buzz among technology analysts.

“We wanted to build out a system that enabled users to have all the fun of the device, but at the same time lets IT have the controls around the corporate data and the corporate space on that device,” Mr. Holleran said.

According to Mark Tauschek, lead research analyst at IT research firm Info-Tech Research Group in London, Ont., BlackBerry Balance could be a key a selling point for RIM’s new devices among enterprise users.

“The way RIM has incorporate Balance into BB10 is significant,” he said.

“It is probably RIM’s biggest chance for salvation. If you can go between your personal persona and your business persona in a gesture, that starts to be pretty compelling. RIM has a pretty short window to really take advantage of that, because I think others and already have started to have multiple accounts.”

We already know RIM plans to launch its next BlackBerry phone on all four major U.S. carriers. In fact, we showed you a leaked photo of the device running on AT&T and Verizon a few weeks ago.

Notorious gadget leaker @evleaks just tweeted a new photo this morning of the new phone, called the BlackBerry Z10, in a promo page on Verizon’s website. We posted the photo for you below.

RIM is expected to formally announce the Z10 at a big press event on January 30. We’ll be there live.

In the meantime, check out some hands-on photos with the new BlackBerry 10 operating system >

Research In Motion Ltd. closed up 6.2%, or US93¢, at US$15.84 on Friday after Jefferies analyst Peter Misek upgraded the stock to buy from hold and raised his price target to US$19.50 from US$13.00.

Mr. Misek told clients RIM will enable corporate BlackBerry email on iPhones and Android devices.

“This change we believe is unknown or not well understood but is important,” he said in a research note. “In the future we think RIM will add bring-your-own-device sandboxing and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) on Android and iOS.”

Mr. Misek now sees the probability of success for BB10 closer to the upper end of his 20-30% range. In this scenario, he thinks the stock could climb to US$56 in the next 12 months.

RIM is up more than 135% since September 2012, when the stock hit a low of $6.18. The shares have been driven by a wave of positive sentiment from both analysts and investors ahead of the Jan. 30 launch of new BB10 devices.

Mr. Misek expects results for RIM’s May (Q1 2014) and August (Q2 2014) quarters will come in well above consensus due to a US$600 average sale price for BB10 and guaranteed volume from carriers.

“Our checks indicate that the carriers have agreed to volume commitments for the first two quarters post launch,” he said, adding that developers are also supporting BB10 more than expected.

RIM is targeting 70,000 BB10 applications available at launch.

Mr. Misek’s estimates include just 4 million in quarterly BB10 sales compared to an estimated installed user base of 20-30 million for RIM in developed markets, which could afford the device.

He also forecasts fiscal 2014 revenue of US$14.9-billion.

“While RIM has lost a huge amount of momentum and share, we also believe that the core installed base has been starved for a legitimate upgrade opportunity.”

The analyst believes investors can win in several ways, including if RIM creates a successful software business on top of Android and iOS.

Another possible source of upside for the stock would come if expectations are too low given that there is very high short interest.

Mr. Misek also suggested a “wild card” in licensing deals or other items.

The past year has seen no shortage of controversial stocks.

Hedge fund managers have culled their skill at taking positions, staging huge publicity campaigns, and generating a lot of discussion around the stocks they decide to bet on with high conviction – or bet against.

Other stocks are controversial because their businesses are particularly consumer facing, which makes their brands all the more recognizable to the average retail investor, looking to get in on unfolding trends in retail or social media.

As a result, quarterly earnings reports from these companies are usually widely anticipated.

Research In Motion (RIMM)

AP

Sector: Technology and Communication

52 Week Stock Performance: -10.0 percent

What’s Going On: Research In Motion has slipped over the past few years as popular smartphones like Apple’s iPhone and mobile devices running on Google’s Android operating system have completely invaded and taken over what used to be Blackberry’s market. However, the company has a pretty clean balance sheet, and shares have rallied substantially since November.

Bull Case: The launch of the Blackberry 10 smartphone, slated for January 30, is wildly successful and RIM takes back some market share.

Bear Case: If the Blackberry 10 launch turns out to be a flop, investor sentiment could sour quickly.

Sears (SHLD)

justj000lie / Flickr, CC.

Sector: Retail

52 Week Stock Performance: +33.2 percent

What’s Going On: Hedge funder Eddie Lampert is the biggest holder of Sears stock, and is now CEO since the company’s former CEO abruptly resigned last week, citing “family health matters.” However, there is concern over whether Lampert has the expertise to turn the troubled retailer around.

Bull Case: Sears is making some progress on improving its financials, and the resignation of its CEO could offer an opportunity to bring in some fresh blood in at the top.

Bear Case: The numbers could get even worse, or they could fail to improve quickly enough to shift investor sentiment. ISI Group analysts write, “Given the very weak store base, continued comp declines, and anemic sales productivity, we can’t forget that second derivative positive for SHLD is still solidly negative (although these results are a YoY improvement).”

Apple (AAPL)

By lynxman on Flickr

Sector: Technology

52 Week Stock Performance: +15.9 percent

What’s Going On: Apple has for a while reigned as the largest company in the world by market capitalization. However, shares of the market’s favorite company have been subjected to a vicious selloff since September. Yesterday, though, famed market timer Tom DeMark said the bottom was in, and shares could rally 22 percent from here.

Bull Case: The selloff has been overdone, and shares begin to rebound. iPhone sales data come in better than expected.

Bear Case: Apple is entering a new, post-Steve Jobs era wherein the company will not be able to innovate as it has in the past. iPhone sales data come in weaker than expected.

Best Buy (BBY)

cbcastro on flickr

Sector: Electronics Retail

52 Week Stock Performance: -41.2 percent

What’s Going On: Best Buy has had a rough go of it lately, and its same-store sales numbers reflect that. However, there may be hope for a turnaround – this holiday season, Best Buy finally logged U.S. sales growth figures that weren’t negative (though they were flat). The company lost a key executive in December, and former CEO Dick Schulze continues to attempt a buyout.

Bull Case: Shares could get a lift if new CEO Hubert Joly can execute a turnaround, or if Schulze actually succeeds in taking over the company. Furthermore, if sales continue to beat expectations, investors could come back to this stock.

Bear Case: Best Buy is experiencing troubles facing the entire brick-and-mortar industry – like showrooming – and deteriorating cash flows could make it less likely that Schulze is successful in buying out the company.

Groupon (GRPN)

Flickr / Groupon

Sector: Internet

52 Week Stock Performance: -72.7 percent

What’s Going On: Groupon‘s stock was under pressure early in 2012 after its accounting firm said it had weak internal controls. A number of companies that use the service have warned of eye popping losses and higher than expected returns have weighed on results. Now, the company is shifting away from local deals to its newer “Groupon Goods” business.

Bull Case: BofA says shares may rise if Groupon can “successfully diversify away from local deals, and goods gross margins may improve.”

Bear Case: The problem with Groupon Goods is that it’s a low-margin business – whereas local deals were high-margin. BofA says this could create uncertainty surrounding earnings as Goods becomes a larger share of Groupon’s business.

Salesforce.com (CRM)

AP Images

Sector: Internet

52 Week Stock Performance: +67.4 percent

What’s Going On: Despite its inability to turn a profit and the large amount of short bets against the stock, shares of Salesforce.com keep going up, leading many to question whether it’s overvalued. However, it’s a big name in cloud computing – a trend investors love.

Bull Case: The company is growing subscribers and revenues at a steady clip and could be a big beneficiary of a structural shift toward cloud software.

Bear Case: The stock is overvalued and the company is unprofitable. Management could run into trouble attempting to manage such rapid growth going forward.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR)

Toby Talbot/AP Images

Sector: Beverages

52 Week Stock Performance: -16.0 percent

What’s Going On: Green Mountain has been involved in a spat with high-profile hedge fund manager David Einhorn, who in late 2011 announced he was short the stock and called into question a number of the company’s practices, including possible fraud. However, the stock has rebounded since November 2012 when the company appointed a new CEO and boosted its earnings guidance for 2013.

Bull Case: After massive buy outs of competitors, Green Mountain has reached a scale that would be hard for some competitors to copy — protecting its high margin coffee business.

Bear Case: Investors remain skeptical of the company’s internal controls. Furthermore, patents on Green Mountain’s popular “K-Cup” recently expired, leaving the door open for others like Starbucks to move into the market.

Netflix (NFLX)

via HackingNetflix on Flickr

Sector: Entertainment

52 Week Stock Performance: +8.1 percent

What’s Going On: Netflix, once one of the market’s favorite momentum stocks, fell out of favor in a big way in 2011. In 2012, shares continued to languish on weak fundamentals – that is, until activist investor Carl Icahn disclosed a 10 percent stake in the company at the end of September. Since then, the stock has rallied.

Bull Case: Icahn could spur change at the company, as he has done with other investments in the past. The company also recently signed an exclusive content deal with Disney, which raises its profile and the quality of its offerings among competitors, according to Morgan Stanley.

Bear Case: The Disney deal was expensive – inked for $500 million – and BofA doesn’t think Netflix will necessarily be able to add subscribers quickly enough to cover those costs. In addition, BofA expects domestic streaming – one of Netflix’s strongest businesses – to come under increasing pressure from competitors.

First Solar (FSLR)

First Solar

Sector: Technology—Semiconductors

52 Week Stock Performance: -20.9 percent

What’s Going On: Solar stocks plunged in 2012 – the industry ETFs, TAN and KWT, were both down around 40 percent. FSLR, as the industry bellwether, was not immune to the price declines.

Bull Case: Rapid declines in crystalline solar module pricing have hurt First Solar, but BofA thinks those declines may be over, and the company could get a good chance to improve its cost structure in 2014.

Bear Case: Europe – a key market for solar – will see solar subsidies under continued fire as fiscally-stretched governments attempt to bring budgets into balance. Furthermore, Morgan Stanley expresses uncertainty over projects in First Solar’s pipeline. Finally, low prices for natural gas could curb demand for other alternative energies like solar.

Lululemon (LULU)

By lululemonathletica on Flickr

Sector: Retail

52 Week Stock Performance: +12.4 percent

What’s Going On: Lululemon shares endured a serious selloff in mid-2012 after a nice run-up to start the year. Momentum traders love this name for its robust projected growth, but they are willing to pay up for it too – the stock trades near 42 times earnings.

Bull Case: Lululemon is growing quickly, and it still has a huge, relatively untapped market ahead of it – men’s apparel.

Bear Case: Morgan Stanley says “the key debate is when LULU shifts from a growth stock to a cash flow play and multiple contraction begins. The answer likely hinges on the international story, which remains unquantifiable.”

Click here for all of the controversial stocks

TORONTO — The Toronto stock market ended relatively flat Monday as the information technology sector came out the strongest, helped by shares of BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion.

Here are the closing numbers

TSX — 12,603.09 +0.91 +0.01%

S&P 500 —1,470.68 -1.37 -0.09%

Dow — 13,507.32 +18.89 +0.14%

Nasdaq — 3,117.50 -8.13 -.026%

The S&P/TSX composite index crept up 0.91 of a point to 12,603.09 while the TSX Venture Exchange slipped 10.72 points to 1,229.53.

The Canadian dollar rose 0.07 of a cent to 101.65 cents US as a new survey by the Bank of Canada showed that Canadian business executives are feeling more confident about 2013.

The central bank’s latest quarterly business outlook survey shows firms on balance think sales and employment will pick up after a tough 2012.

The TSX information technology rose 2.5%, with BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (TSX:RIM) jumping 10.4%.

The company’s shares were up $1.39 to $14.70 ahead of the launch of its BlackBerry 10 devices later this month, as reports emerged that one of its biggest competitors may be feeling some strain in its sales.

Apple Inc. stock was off 3.6% on reports that the company has reduced orders for parts for the iPhone 5 after sales fell short of expectations in the current quarter. Its shares declined US$18.55 to $501.75.

Key commodities rose to their highest levels in several months. The February crude contract lifted 58 cents to $94.14 on the New York Mercantile Exchange, bringing oil to near a four-month high.

Gold prices ended the session at a three-month high, up $8.80 for the February contract at US$1,669.40 an ounce. March copper dipped two cents to $3.63 a pound.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrials was up 18.89 points at 13,507.32, the Nasdaq declined 8.13 points to 3,117.50 and the S&P 500 index subtracted 1.37 points to 1,470.68.

The TSX mining and metals sector dropped half a percent despite a batch of deals.

Switzerland’s Swatch Group has reached an agreement to buy Harry Winston Diamond’s (TSX:HW) retail jewelry and watch division for US$1 billion in cash and assumed debt. The Toronto-based company says the deal will position it to pursue mining opportunities as Dominion Diamond Corp. Its shares were up 4.4%, or 63 cents, to $14.90.

Alamos Gold Inc. (TSX:AGI) is making a takeover bid for Aurizon Mines Ltd. (TSX:ARZ) that values the Vancouver-based company at $780 million, or $4.65 per Aurizon share in cash and stock. Aurizon’s board has yet to make a public comment on the proposal. Aurizon’s AMEX-listed shares were up nearly 29% in pre-open trading. Alamos shares dipped $2.02 to $14.90.

Uranium One Inc. (TSX:UUU) is supporting a $1.3-billion offer from a Russian company known as ARMZ, which wants to take the Canadian company private. ARMZ already owns 51.4% of Uranium One’s stock. Its shares rose 14.5%, or 35 cents, to $2.76.

Canadian Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. (TSX:XSR) has reached an agreement with Chrysler Canada under which the auto company will install SiriusXM commercial-free satellite radios into an unspecified number of vehicles over the next five years. CSR shares were up 19 cents to $6.19.

Dell’s stock soared 12% on a report that the struggling personal computer maker is in talks to take the company private. Bloomberg News says Dell has discussed a potential sale with at least two firms that specialize in buying companies whose stocks have fallen out of favour. It shares rose US$1.41 to $12.29.

Here’s the news investors were watching today:

RIM rises to highest level in almost a year as Apple stumbles

Swatch Group buys Harry Winston jewellery brand for $1-billion

Nortel executives found not guilty on all counts of fraud

Apple cuts orders for iPhone 5 parts on weak demand: reports

ON DECK TUESDAY

• Parliamentary Budget Officer speaks at noon in Ottawa

ECONOMIC NEWS

CANADA

8:30 a.m.

• Existing home sales

UNITED STATES

8:30 a.m.

• Retail sales: Economists expect 0.2% rise
• Producer price index: Economists expect 0.19% decline from month before, 1.49% year over year

10 a.m.

• Business inventories: Economists expect 0.3% gain

CORPORATE NEWS

CANADA

• Cogeco Cable Q1 earnings
• Cogeco Inc Q1 earnings

UNITED STATES

• Forest Laboratories Inc. Q3 earnings: Analysts expect a loss of 14¢ a share
• Lennar Corp. Q3 earnings: Analysts expect 43¢ a share

RIM’s BlackBerry 10 is the long-touted software platform that hopes to turn around the company’s fortunes.

Now we have a first look at how it’s going to push new phones running the system, like the BlackBerry Z10, thanks to these leaked retail pictures shared by RapidBerry.net .

The in-store marketing materials—they look like posters for window displays—emphasize features like BlackBerry Balance, which lets you use the same phone for personal and business data without commingling them.

Other images showcase BlackBerry Messenger’s video-chat, the built-in calendar, the Web browser, and other features.

So it’s clear that RIM is going to be emphasizing its software in selling its new phones.

Click here to see photos of the new BB10 OS in action >

Check out the picture below, then head over to RapidBerry.net to see the rest .

We’re just a few short weeks away from the big launch of BlackBerry 10, the new mobile operating system that will run on at least one new touchscreen BlackBerry phone.

Today at a meeting away from the main Consumer Electronics Show floor, RIM gave us a look at the latest build of BB10 to show off all the newest features.

The version we saw isn’t the final one that you’ll get to use in a few weeks, but RIM tells us it’s very close.

Our snap reaction after the quick 10-minute demo: It looks really good, just as smooth as iOS on iPhone and Google’s Android . And BB10 has the best notifications center we’ve seen on a mobile device, letting you quickly “peek” at incoming emails, calendar notifications, tweets, etc. with a natural swiping gesture.

BB10 also has a cool time-shifting camera that lets you change the faces of individuals in case they blink during a shot.

Here’s a quick tour of some of the coolest features in BB10:

Here’s the lock screen. You can swipe up from the bottom to unlock the phone or tap and hold the camera button to launch the camera app.

We decided to launch the camera app.

From an open app, just swipe up from the bottom to view your most recent apps. You can tap the app to open it. Now swipe over from the right…

Click here to see more photos of the BlackBerry 10 in action >

Read full story here.

About this time last year, Research In Motion Ltd. was closing out one of the darkest years in its history. Canada’s BlackBerry maker was reeling after a year of product delays, service outages and the underwhelming launch of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

As 2012 arrived, shares of RIM had fallen nearly 80% in 12 months as the company’s BlackBerry devices had fallen out of favour with customers while Apple Inc.’s iPhone and handsets running Google Inc.’s Android software continued to increase in popularity.

At the time, there were rumours of an executive shakeup at RIM and many Wall Street analysts appeared to have lost faith in the BlackBerry maker.

One year later, RIM is ending a year during which its shares finished down roughly 20% from where they started. BlackBerry 10 — the operating system one of its former co-chief executives said would help RIM “leapfrog” its competitors — was pushed to 2013, and new CEO Thorsten Heins’ recent comments about changes to RIM’s services business have raised fresh concerns about the company’s financial future.

Now, with the launch of BlackBerry 10 less than a month away, RIM is hoping 2013 will play out somewhat differently than the past two years.

BlackBerry 10 is scheduled to make its long-awaited debut Jan. 30 along with the first two BlackBerry devices to run on the software.

At the same time, Mr. Heins has earned praise from analysts for cutting costs while streamlining the company’s operations in such areas as manufacturing.

Still, BlackBerry 10 isn’t likely to solve RIM’s problems overnight. RIM’s share of the global smartphone market stands at 4.7%, according to research firm IDC, while Apple and Google combine for nearly 90%.

Although BlackBerry 10 has received some positive buzz in the run-up to its release, the true test for RIM will come when the new BlackBerrys are placed on store shelves and on carrier websites next to the iPhone 5 and devices running Android or Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone software.

Sales of BlackBerry devices, which clocked in at 6.9 million units in the most recent quarter, will likely be bolstered by the first BB10 devices, as BlackBerry fans and corporate partners upgrade to the next generation of handsets.

But whether RIM can secure enough new customers and whether there’s enough pent-up demand among the BlackBerry faithful to generate positive momentum around RIM remains unknown.

Of course, RIM’s turnaround hopes don’t end with the first two BlackBerry 10 devices slated to be unveiled this month. As Mr. Heins has said, RIM sees BlackBerry 10 as a computing platform capable of powering everything from smartphones and tablets to automobile computer systems. Indeed, BlackBerry 10 isn’t so much the culmination of a RIM turnaround strategy as it is the first move in any potential comeback.

RIM has also poured considerable resources into courting developers to the BlackBerry 10 platform, holding a series of developer Jams around the world throughout 2012. RIM will need the support of third-party developers if it hopes to create an ecosystem of applications for its new family of devices.

Then of course there’s the whole matter of RIM’s services business. RIM plans to offer more details about its plans to change its pricing strategy as it pertains to the company’s high-margin service fees business as BlackBerry 10 services are introduced.

But analysts were clearly spooked by Mr. Heins’ announcement during a Dec. 20 conference call that certain wireless subscribers who don’t want RIM’s enhanced services, such as security features, “are expected to generate less or no service revenue” in the future. This is one area of RIM’s business Wall Street will be watching carefully as 2013 plays out.

RIM entered 2012 under a dark cloud. Many observers believed at the time RIM’s leaders would be better off selling the company, either in whole or in part, than attempting a comeback that seemed perpetually just out of reach.

Now, at the outset of 2013, RIM is less than a month away from the most important new product introduction in its history, a product it hopes can help lead to a better year than either 2011 or 2012.

RIM’s next BlackBerry phone will be called the BlackBerry Z10, according to a leaked ad obtained by Unwired View .

This will be the first BlackBerry to run RIM’s new mobile operating system, BlackBerry 10. RIM will formally unveil the new phone and all the finalized features of BB10 at a big global media event on Jan. 30.

The ad matches previous leaks. Last week, a Vietnamese tech blog got its hands on the BlackBerry Z10 and posted several photos and a hands-on video. Click here to see them >

Here’s the leaked ad:

With the launch of its next generation of BlackBerry smartphones on the horizon, Research In Motion Ltd. cleared one more financial hurdle on Thursday, delivering financial results that topped Wall Street expectations.

While RIM’s revenue topped expectations and its losses for the quarter weren’t as steep as some had predicted, the Waterloo, Ont. company also announced that for the first time, its global BlackBerry user base declined.

Still, after two years of declining market share and shrinking profits in the face of overwhelming competition from Apple Inc.’s iPhones and Google Inc.’s Android platform, RIM’s leaders now feel the company is on the right track as it sets to launch its new BlackBerry 10 smartphone technology on Jan. 30.

“We believe the company has stabilized and we will turn the corner in the next year,” RIM chief executive Thorsten Heins said during a conference call with analysts to discuss the company’s third quarter financial results.

Despite the shrinking BlackBerry user base, RIM was able to increase its cash position by roughly US$600-million to US$2.9-billion as the company prepares a war chest to help with the launch of two new Blackberry devices in the coming quarter.

Many analysts believe RIM needs to mount a successful BlackBerry 10 launch if the company hopes to recover some of its lost lustre in the global smartphone industry.

“All the things I cared about were either in line to better-than-expected,” Peter Misek, an equity analyst with New York-based Jefferies & Co., said in an interview. “Margins and cash were much better than expected, and subscribers were in line with what I expected.”

Mr. Misek said RIM’s increased cash position was “impressive.”

“It puts them in a position to make BB10 succeed,” he said. “They’ve got enough cash, they’ve got enough people … now it’s about execution.”

Indeed, many analysts are now looking ahead to RIM’s BB10 roll out and the company’s ensuing strategy.

“I want to see how you go from just surviving and squeezing your balance sheet and keeping cash to becoming a profitable company,” said Colin Gillis, a financial analyst with BGC Partners in New York.

“This is all great, and the stock lift is great, the rate of decline is less significant than people thought … but it doesn’t answer the larger question of the strategic positioning of the firm and the platform.”

RIM said revenue for the third quarter was US$2.73-billion, which was down 47% from the US$5.2-billion the company generated in the same quarter last year. However, RIM’s revenue total was ahead of the US$2.66-billion analysts had expected, according to estimates from Bloomberg.

RIM said it shipped roughly 6.9 million BlackBerry smartphones and 255,000 PlayBook tablets in the quarter. However, RIM’s global user base fell to 79 million BlackBerry users, down from the 80 million users the company had at the end of the previous quarter.

RIM’s adjusted net loss for the quarter was US$114-million, or 22¢ per share diluted.

Despite the launch of BlackBerry 10 in the current quarter, RIM still expects to post an operating loss in the current quarter.

Although shares of RIM initially spiked after hours on the positive results, those gains were quickly erased as analysts raised concerns about proposed changes to RIM’s lucrative services business during the call with Mr. Heins.

FP Tech Desk editor Matt Hartley sifts through RIM’s Q3 earnings report. Refresh your browser to see the latest updates:

• Revenue of US$2.73-billion tops analyst expectations of US$2.66-billion; still down 47% over last year

• RIM’s adjusted net loss for the quarter was US$114-million, or 22 cents per share diluted, ahead of expectations

• Subscriber base falls for the first time, down to 79 million users from 80 million last quarter

• RIM increases cash position by $600-million to US$2.9-billion

• Read our full story of the results here

• Leaked BB10 ad suggests new BlackBerry to be called the “Z10”

6:00 p.m. Looks like that will do it for the call. Thanks for joining us. We’ll have an update to our story online soon. And remember, we’ll have continuing coverage of all things RIM leading up to the launch of BB10 at the end of January. Thanks again.

5:59 p.m. Analyst question is about the software strategy, wants to know what RIM plans to do to support BB7 devices and avoid a similar fate to that which befell Nokia’s Symbian. Heins says RIM won’t abandon BB7, and will continue to work on the platform, one example being the BBM voice feature that launched recently.

5:58 p.m. Barclays analyst asks about non-enterprise service fees, which were at approximately $3 per month per user. Bidulka says that ARPU was down quarter over quarter, which reflects some of the pricing initiatives the company is taking to maintain subscriber base.

5:56 p.m. Bank of America analyst wants to know what an average enterprise user needs to put in place to migrate to BB10. Heins talks about the BB10 enterprise program, saying that BB10 will be able to manage not just BlackBerrys, but devices from other manufacturers.

5:54 p.m. RBC analyst Mark Sue is asking for more feedback about the initial response to BB10, and some more details on the marketing plans for BB10. Heins says the company hit like 120 carriers, meeting with CIOs, and that the positive feedback is “global” in nature. RIM has developed a “pretty subtle” way of getting into the marketing domain and that the company is excited to start the marketing of the product and that carriers are excited to chip in.

5:52 p.m. Cleveland Research analyst wants to know about CapEx in fiscal 14 and how RIM will support menu-driven services approach. Bidulka says that CapEx has come down and that the company wants to continue to drive efficiencies.

5: 50 p.m. JP Morgan analyst asks about product inventory, which has been going down in recent months. Does the company expect that channel inventory to go up. Heins says company is managing channel inventory of BB7, and that the company can react quicker than in the past. With BB10, RIM expects to increase inventory in the factories and warehouses, that’s part of the cash reinvestment.

5:48 p.m. Morgan Stanley analyst wants to know about the service contracts. The current service fees that RIM collects on BB7 and below, will the shift to BB10, change those contracts? Are we to understand that all service fees will be paid by the user, and not the carrier? Bidulka says that as the company is ready to roll out these plans, it will offer up more information. Not ready to disclose all of that right now.

5:45 p.m. Goldman Sachs analyst asks again about the services revenues, which are likely to see a decline over the next year or so. Second question is about wondering if the enterprise upgrade cycle won’t have a tangible result until second half of 2012. Heins says upgrade cycles will be affected by enterprise budgets and upgrade schedules. With BYOD, you have to be attractive to consumers first, then these devices get connected to corporate infrasturctures, Heins says.

5:41 p.m. Analyst question about when the QWERTY BB10 device will be available and whether RIM plans to comment on carrier availability. Heins says he sees carriers already placing orders for BB10, and while he’s not saying there’s a rush to be the first to get BB10 in market, he does say there’s excitement about the new products.

5:39 p.m. Citi analyst asks about other mobile device management products. Heins says RIM has a large customer base, and that despite the BYOD trend, because BlackBerry Enterprise Server is a leading edge technology, it offers more than simply mobile device management. Heins feels the company is well positioned to compete.

5:38 p.m. Credit Suisse analyst wants to know more about changes to the service fees. Heins says RIM will offer a package of services, and RIM realizes that some of the smaller enterprises will be good enough with some email exchange product, so there’s very little value add in this. With BES 10 and cross-platform mobile device management, RIM says it’s the full BlackBerry package. How that will be priced, and the penetration rate depends on BB10 penetration rate in enterprises.

5:36 p.m. First question is about the tiering of services. Heins says that the one size fits all doesn’t work anymore. RIM is moving to a system that structures service fees for various industries. Heins says the transition to BB10 will go alongside the BES service transition as well. RIM trying to make this “as easy as possible” but that it’s too early to say how the numbers will change.

5:35 p.m. Although RIM expects to start using cash position for marketing and other purposes, Bidulka is confident that the company will end the year in a better cash position than it started the year. RIM is expected to book another loss in Q4.

5:33 p.m. Bidulka says that as the company gets set to sell BB10, competitive pressures will remain. We will continue to consider using pricing initiatives (read cuts) to drive BB7 and services fees. As we’ve said here, Bidulka points out that some consumers may avoid picking up BB7 devices while they wait for BB10 devices, which could eat into sales.

5:24 p.m. R&D spending up roughly $27-million.

5: 23 p.m. CFO Brian Bidulka is now giving us a bit of a run down on the numbers. PlayBook still selling in North America, RIM focusing on enterprise users. PlayBook inventory has improved, he said.

5:21 p.m. “ We are realistic about our competitors” and respect our competition, Heins says. But he adds that customers respond to innovation, and believes RIM can make a difference.

5:19 p.m. “We believe the company has stabilized and we will turn the corner in the next year.” Heins says.

5:17 p.m. RIM will begin seeing revenue from BB10 in the fourth quarter. RIM also plans to adjust its service business to accomodate BB10. Subscribers that required enhanced services are expected to generate monthly service revenue. Other subscribers are expected to generate less service revenue. But service revenue are not going away, Mr. Heins says. Heins wants to position RIM as the “clear leader” in the enterprise mobility market.

5:13 p.m. RIM is nearing the end of the headcount reductions, Mr. Heins says. (Company was to cut 5,000 jobs as part of a cost optimization program). RIM says that its core cost reduction plans are one quarter ahead of schedule. Says extra cash on hand will be invested into BB10 launch. As for the strategic review: RIM continues to meet with potential partners about possible tie ups and relationships that could help the company. Heins declines to comment on these talks. He sees strategic review as one of the key components in RIM’s efforts to create new opportunities. RIM remains “laser-focused” on returning the company to stable financial growth. We are committed to an amazing launch for BlackBerry 10, Mr. Heins said.

5:11 p.m. RIM has held 44 developer jams in 37 countries. Heins calls developer momentum “outstanding.” Leading brands are looking to join the platform, Mr. Heins says. This is key to high adoption rates, he says. January 30 is going to be “exciting.” He says.

5:09 p.m. Heins discusses CIO Robin Bienfait’s retirement. Moves onto BB10. Heins and senior team have been on an “extended” road show to show BB10 to carriers and partners. With BB10, they see the potential to enrich the user experience with BlackBerry Flow. Heins promises “more surprises” at launch. In October, RIM announced 50 carriers are testing BlackBerry 10, now that number is up to 150. This week, carriers began announcing plans to carry BB10. RIM is testing BB10 with 120 companies and organizations.

5:06 p.m. “As you can imagine, this is a very dynamic time at Research In Motion. Since becoming CEO less than one year ago, we have put in place a clear road map …” Our core restructuring process has delivered results, Mr. Heins says. On “the verge” of launching BlackBerry 10 on Jan. 30. We sold just under 7 million smartphones, Mr. Heins said. Cash flow was strong, cash position increased, Mr. Heins said. BlackBerry subscriber base has fallen, was up from 2 million from the beginning of the year, and up 3 million over last year. North American subscriber base saw the biggest decline.

5:02 p.m. First up is RIM CEO Thorsten Heins.

5:01 p.m. Wheels up. Here we go.

5:00 p.m. Okay, we’re just about ready to go here. We’ll try and provide updates throughout the call.

4:50 p.m. If you would like to listen along with the RIM earnings call to hear what CEO Thorsten Heins has to say, you can do so here.

4:49 p.m. Make that 8%.

4:48 p.m. Shares of RIM are up roughly 4% in after hours trading in New York.

4:47 p.m. As for the current quarter, RIM is making it clear to investors the company is by no means out of the woods. For the current quarter, RIM expects “continued pressure on operating results” as the BlackBerry 10 launch draws closer. Of course, one challenge RIM faces is selling BlackBerry 7 devices (such as the Bold 9900) now that BlackBerry fans know to expect BB10 devices to launch early in the new year. RIM said it is considering “using pricing initiatives” on BB7 devices and service fees in some markets in order to “maintain our subscriber base and drive more BlackBerry users,” according to the company’s statement.

4:43 p.m. If you’d like to read our first take on the RIM results, our story is posted here .

4:42 p.m. Also interesting to note is that RIM continues to add to its cash pile. RIM added U$950-million to its cash reserves in the quarter, bringing its cash reserves to US$2.9-billion. Analysts may want to know what RIM plans to do with that cash.

4:36 p.m. As we’ve been saying for months now, all eyes are firmly fixed on BlackBerry 10. There are many observers who believe BB10 is quite simply the make or break moment for RIM. A strong BB10 launch would likely go a long way to restoring some confidence in the company, even if RIM would still be miles away from returning to its former glory. If the BB10 launch goes poorly, or the first BB10 devices are a flop, expect the RIM doomsayers to up the volume.

4:34 p.m. So what did we learn from the Q3 earnings report? First off, not a lot of surprises in here. Analysts widely expected another loss for the quarter. RIM CEO Thorsten Heins said the company was likely to report a loss for this quarter back in September. As for the subscriber number dipping to 79 million from 80 million users, it’s certainly not good news for RIM, but RIM was widely expected to report a decline in subscribers last quarter.

4:30 p.m. Hi everyone, Matt Hartley here. We’ll be live blogging the RIM Q3 earnings report and subsequent earnings call, which is set to kick off around 5 p.m. ET.

4:28 p.m. RIM did not provide a specific outlook for upcoming quarters but said once again there will be “continued pressure on operating results as it gets set to launch its BlackBerry 10 platform.” The launch is scheduled for Jan. 30, part way through RIM’s fourth quarter of its fiscal 2013 year.

4:26 p.m. The company says Robin Bienfait, its chief information officer, will retire at the end of the year after six years with the firm.

4:24 p.m. RIM substantially increased its cash holdings to $2.9-billion, up $600-million from $2.3-billion last quarter.

The company shipped 6.9 million BlackBerrys and 255,000 playbooks during the period.

4:20 p.m. Numbers are out: RIM reported revenue for the quarter of $2.73-billion, ahead of consensus expectations for $2.66-billion, according to estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

It had a net loss per share of 22 cents, also beating estimates for a loss of 35 cents per share.

Subscribers dropped to 79 million in the quarter, down from 80 million in the second quarter of its fiscal 2013 year.

After months of delays, RIM is on the cusp of releasing its new smartphone operating system, BlackBerry 10.

Today, the company announced it has finished the ‘gold’ build of its software developers kit (SDK) for BB10.

It’s an important milestone. The build, the company says, contains all the final elements developers need to create apps from the coming BlackBerry 10 operating system.

If BB10 has any hope of being successful enough to turn RIM around, it’ll need the support of third-party developers to make great apps for the new operating system. No matter how good a phone is, it’s tough to convince consumers to buy if the app ecosystem isn’t there.

RIM says top application developers have already committed to building apps for the new system.

RIM will formally unveil the final version of BB10 and at least one new smartphone on Jan. 30, 2013.

Now check out the very first teaser photo of the new BlackBerry phone >

With files from The Canadian Press

RIM is expanding its BlackBerry Messenger service , which lets BlackBerry users text other BlackBerry users for free, to include free voice calls when you’re connected to WiFi.

It’s compatible with all BlackBerry OS 6 devices and above.

If you want this functionality, just download the new BlackBerry Messenger 7 app, which will be available in BlackBerry App World Monday.

We’re skeptical that this will do much to turn around RIM’s fortunes. To borrow a line from Arianna Huffington, “When your house is burning down, you don’t worry about the remodeling.”

However, RIM will formally announce new BlackBerry phones running its new BlackBerry 10 operating system on Jan. 30, 2013. The WiFi calling feature could be a big part of that.

Recent gains for shares of Research In Motion Ltd. have prompted a downgraded by Canaccord Genuity.

T. Michael Walkley cut his rating on the BlackBerry maker to sell from hold as the analyst does not believe the company’s fundamentals support the recent share price appreciation.

“While we believe BB10 is a dramatically improved user experience versus BB7 and RIM’s new hardware is more competitive with higher-end smartphones, our checks do not indicate the consumer pull, carrier push, or developer excitement necessary for BlackBerry 10 to reverse the challenging trends faced by RIM in order to return the company to sustained profitability,” Mr. Walkley told clients.

While he expects initial sales of RIM’s BB10 smartphones will improve the company’s January and May quarter device sales as well as its average sales price mix, the analyst sees a very low probability that BB10 can reverse RIM’s long-term business trends.

Mr. Walkley noted that higher-end consumers continue to switch from BlackBerry to iPhone and Android ecosystems. He also pointed out that bring-your-own device trends and sub-$200 3G Android smartphones in emerging markets threaten RIM’s subscriber base.

It’s new lineup of BB10 devices launches on Jan. 30. Positive sentiment ahead of what many consider a make-or-break moment for RIM has driven the stock up more than 75% in the past three months.

While shares of Research In Motion Ltd. continue their roller coaster ride on Wall Street, the Waterloo, Ont.-based company continues its final preparations for the launch of its new smartphone platform, BlackBerry 10, early in the new year.

At the BlackBerry Jam Asia conference in Bangkok, Thailand, Thursday, RIM officials announced the company’s mobile application storefront will no longer be known as “BlackBerry App World” but will simply be called “BlackBerry World” on BlackBerry 10.

In addition to applications and games, the new BlackBerry World storefront will also enable users to purchase movies, music and other digital content.

RIM also unveiled its latest BlackBerry 10 developer prototype device, the Dev Alpha C, which is the first BlackBerry 10 developer device to feature RIM’s iconic QWERTY keyboard . RIM has handed out roughly 7,500 Dev Alpha devices to developers since last May in the hopes of encouraging application creators to build games and other applications for the company’s forthcoming operating system.

“Developers from around the world are joining us on the last leg of the journey to the launch of BlackBerry 10 and we are thrilled at the enthusiasm we see from them,” RIM’s vice president of developer relations Alec Saunders said in a statement.
“We have worked hard, and continue to work hard to meet the needs of developers … We’ve continued to refine and add on to our developer programs to ensure we are giving developers the best opportunities for success with BlackBerry 10.”

RIM has scheduled an event for Jan. 30, 2013 where the embattled BlackBerry maker is planning to fully unveil the long-delayed BlackBerry 10 operating system, as well as the first two BlackBerry smartphones designed to run on the software. RIM officials have said the company plans to launch one BlackBerry with a full touchscreen, and a second with a QWERTY keyboard.

Shares of RIM are up roughly 47% over the past month, but have fluctuated wildly as financial analysts offer differing opinions on the company’s outlook and BB10’s potential for success.

Indeed, RIM shares closed up 4% at US$11.54 in New York on Thursday after Goldman Sachs upgraded its rating on the BlackBerry maker to buy and raised its price target to US$16 from US$9.

“With these devices RIM appears to finally be aiming for the leading edge hardware performance that was missing from its prior generations,” Goldman analyst Simona Jankowski said in a note to clients.

On Wednesday, Byron Capital Markets analyst Tom Astle updated his outlook for RIM, saying he now sees a little more upside left — even if RIM is less “mispriced” than when he first launched his buy rating earlier this month, an announcement that followed similar votes of confidence from CIBC and Jefferies & Co. last week.

Still, there are plenty of analysts who doubt RIM’s ability to turn around its smartphone business, which has been outflanked by Apple Inc., Google Inc. and Samsung Electronics Ltd. in recent years.

Indeed, one analyst recently wrote that RIM’s BB10 would be “dead on arrival” while Morgan Stanley analyst Ehud Gelblum earlier this week attributed the recent rally in RIM shares to “irrational exuberance.”

Earlier this week, shares of RIM dropped after market research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech said RIM’s share of the United States smartphone market fell to just 1.6%, a drop of nearly seven percentage points over the same period last year.

Earlier this month Byron Capital Markets analyst Tom Astle launched his coverage of RIM with a buy rating, just as the company’s stock was soaring.

On Wednesday, Mr. Astle updated his outlook for Research In Motion, saying he now sees a little more upside left — even if RIM is less “mispriced” than when he first launched his buy rating.

Read more.

“We now need earnings expectations to drive the stock (vs. book value), but after looking at some earnings assumptions, we think we are good for a little more madness,” he said.

Mr. Astle’s comments follow a more pessimistic note released earlier on Wednesday by Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair. Mr. Blair said that BB10, RIM’s upcoming software and hardware revamp, was providing “false hope” to investors. He added that he does not expect BB10 to have a “meaningful” impact on the smartphone market.

RIM’s stock has surged 54% in the last three months, boosted by favourable early reviews of the new BB10 smartphones, which are scheduled to launch on Jan. 30.

Mr. Astle said he expects RIM to ship about three million BB10 devices in its first quarter of availability. He also upgraded his 12-month price target on RIM to $14, from his original call of $12 a share earlier this month.

But while he upped his price target, Mr. Astle said that given the recent rally in the share price, the “easy call is over.”

“Our original premise was that the stock was trading at a significant discount to tangible book value (TBV) and sentiment should improve on the back of a new product launch,” he said.

And the stock has now returned to tangible book value, meaning the next round of upside will have to come from the company’s earnings. In order for the stock to hit $14, Mr. Astle said RIM needs to post earnings per share of $1.50 in fiscal 2015 (i.e. the next calendar year).

In order to do that, Mr. Astle said RIM will have to see 30-million BB10 phones during that time period, at an average selling price of $450 and a gross margin of 20%.

But Mr. Astle admits that while the assumptions aren’t incredibly optimistic, there isn’t “much to model them on.” Which means investors have to still have a little bit of faith that RIM can pull off a rebound in sales next year.

RIM shares rose over 3% on Wednesday

Former Research In Motion Ltd. co-chief executive Jim Balsillie has stayed largely out of the limelight since stepping away from the embattled BlackBerry maker earlier this year.

After Mr. Balsillie and his co-CEO counterpart Mike Lazaridis were replaced by Thorsten Heins at the helm of RIM in January , the man who was the public face of Canada’s largest technology firm for more than a decade, and was once one of the most prominent figures in Canadian business, resigned his seat on the Waterloo, Ont.-based company’s board of directors in May .

Since then, he has made few public appearances.

On Wednesday, Waterloo’s Communitech startup incubator posted a video interview with Mr. Balsillie as part of the organization’s “ Communitech at 15 ” anniversary series.

In the 10-part interview , Mr. Balsillie — one of Communitech’s founding board members when the organization was started in 1997 — chats with Communitech staff writer Anthony Reinhart about the legacy of Communitech, how Waterloo needs strong local leadership to help the technology industry grow and what he’s been up to since leaving RIM.

In the interview, Mr. Balsillie discusses the pressures of running RIM (“I’ve had my fair share of cold sweats over the tricky commercial issues over the decades”), whether he plans to act as an angel investor for young companies (“Investing is work. So do I want to do work is a question”) and the municipal challenges facing the Waterloo region (“If you don’t crack that code, the talent will migrate elsewhere because it can”).

Below, we’ve highlighted a few tidbits from the interview:

Communitech: Were you able to stay current on the growth of the local tech sector during your later years at RIM?

On whether he plans to make any angel investments now that he’s no longer involved with RIM:

On his immediate plans for the future

As for his thoughts on the next 15 years of Communitech and the Waterloo tech sector?

It might come as a shock to some, but there appears to be a small but growing chorus of optimism surrounding beleaguered BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd.

After two years of product delays, service outages and analyst downgrades, shares of RIM are rallying as the Waterloo, Ont.-company draws closer to the launch of the BlackBerry 10 operating system and the next generation of BlackBerry smartphones.

Although plenty of questions remain about RIM’s ability to compete with Apple Inc.’s iPhone and devices running Google Inc.’s Android software, at least some analysts see a buying opportunity in the BlackBerry maker.

On Thursday, shares of RIM jumped 17% on the Toronto Stock Exchange, the biggest increase in more than three years, closing at $12, after National Bank Financial analyst Kris Thompson suggested investors pick up RIM stock ahead of the launch of BlackBerry 10 in the new year.

RIM has scheduled an event for Jan. 30, 2013 where the company is planning to officially launch the BlackBerry 10 platform as well as the first two BlackBerry smartphones to run on the new software.

Mr. Thompson’s upgrade followed a similar vote of confidence for RIM earlier this week from Jefferies & Company analyst Peter Misek — long one of the company’s most vocal and influential critics — who raised his rating and price target on the stock.

The performance of RIM’s shares, up more than 75% over the past two months, is welcome news for investors who have seen shares of the BlackBerry maker plummet from a record high of $148 in 2008.

Of course, there are still legions of skeptics. One U.S. analyst recently wrote that RIM’s new software platform would be “dead on arrival.”

Still, RIM chief executive Thorsten Heins has earned praise from analysts for cutting costs, streamlining operations and managing the company through a tumultuous time since taking over earlier this year.

In a statement released last month, Mr. Heins said BlackBerry 10 devices have entered the “Lab Entry” phase with more than 50 carriers around the world.

Mr. Thompson increased his price target on RIM to US$15 from US$12, while also raising his shipment and 2014 earnings forecasts.

“We think there is more money to be made ahead of the … launch of BB10,” the analyst said in a note to clients.

“The new management team is executing by maintaining the BlackBerry subscriber base, managing costs and cash, and seemingly readying a February 2013 BB10 global platform launch.”

Click on the graphic below to view an annotated timeline of RIM’s stock performance since January 2012

Mr. Thompson’s fiscal 2014 shipments estimate climbs to 35.5 million units from 31.6 million previously, reflecting a higher global market share of 4.5% from 4.0%.

“The shipments boost reflects about one more month of BB10 product availability plus a little extra for the positive sentiment building in the industry from our discussions,” he said, noting that most analysts were expecting a March launch.

Mr. Thompson expects shipment estimates will rise ahead of the launch, particularly from U.S. brokers, where a break in negativity could lead to short covering a further momentum for the stock.

RIM had rallied roughly 20% in the five days prior to Thursday as analysts and investors grow more optimistic about the prospects of BB10.

Financial Post, with files from Jonathan Ratner and The Canadian Press

The Ontario Securities Commission has agreed to stay sanctions and penalties imposed on Vic Alboini and others associated with Northern Securities until at least Dec. 18.

Mr. Alboini, who gained prominence as a critic of BlackBerry smart phone maker Research In Motion Ltd., has appealed the decision and sanctions imposed by the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC).

IIROC announced last week it was suspending Mr. Alboini for two years. He has also been permanently banned as an “ultimate designated person” at an investment dealer and fined $625,000.

Looking into allegations stemming from 2008, an IIROC panel ruled that Mr. Alboini, who was the ultimate designed person at dealer Northern Securities, “engaged in a trading practice which improperly obtained access to credit for his client… and in doing so risked the capital” of both Northern Securities and its carrying broker.

The panel looked beyond the 2008 trading, and concluded that between 2006 and 2010, Mr. Alboini and Northern’s chief compliance officer Frederick Earl Vance “repeatedly failed to ensure that NSI (Northern) corrected deficiencies found in three business conduct compliance reviews and one trading conduct review.”

By doing so, IIROC said, they engaged in “conduct unbecoming or detrimental to the public interest.”

The BlackBerry news site Crackberry received this photo of BlackBerry’s next-generation smartphone next to the iPhone 5 .

RIM is expected to formally announce the phone on January 30, 2013. It’ll run the company’s new mobile operating system, BlackBerry 10.

Here’s what we know about the new phone from previous leaks and Pocket-Lint .

[np-related]

The so-called “L-Series” will have a 4.2-inch display. It’ll also have an 8 MP camera that records 1080p HD video.

RIM is also expected to launch another BlackBerry 10 phone with a keyboard, but details on that device are pretty scarce right now.

Don’t Miss: Leaked: If This New BlackBerry Is Real, It’s Going To Be A Beast >

Research In Motion Ltd. is getting BBM ready for BB10.

As RIM continues to prepare its redesigned operating system for release in the new year , the Waterloo, Ont.-based company has announced it is also overhauling its flagship BlackBerry Messenger instant messaging service to add new features and to help ease users’ transition to the new BlackBerry 10 platform.

On Wednesday, RIM unveiled BBM version 7, the latest iteration of the company’s famous instant messaging platform which remains exclusive to the company’s BlackBerry smartphones. The service remains one of the key selling points for RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones, with roughly 60 million of the company’s 80 million global users accessing BBM.

[np-related]

The leading feature of the new software is known as BBM Voice, which will enable users to place free voice calls to their BBM contacts over a WiFi connection, similar to other Internet calling services such as Microsoft Corp.’s Skype or Apple Inc.’s FaceTime.

With the new feature, BBM users will be able to switch quickly from text-based BBM conversations to free voice calls over a WiFi connection.

In addition to the new BBM Voice service, RIM is also introducing new features to make it easier for BlackBerry owners to transfer their BBM profiles and contacts from their existing BlackBerry smartphones to BlackBerry 10 devices, which will be launching shortly after the company’s press event on Jan. 30, 2013.

RIM will now store a user’s BBM contacts and profile information in the cloud, so when registering for BBM on a new device, users will simply need to enter their BlackBerry User ID and password in order to transfer over their information.

“The simplest way to think about this is a lot of us who are internal are using BlackBerry 10 devices and BBOS devices and moving back and forth between those, today was quite challenging,” T.A. McCann, RIM’s vice-president of BlackBerry Messenger and social communities , said in an interview.

“But with the advance of BB7, I essentially have my BBM contacts in the cloud and it allows me to move between devices very easily. In the external world it will be useful for people who are happy with their BBM experience to move from one device to another and most importantly move into BB10.”

RIM officials said in a statement that BBM version 7 will work with smartphones running BlackBerry 6 OS or higher, and that the company will be launching a version for use with BB 5 OS devices in the future. BlackBerry users can download BBM 7 from the company’s Beta Zone Website.

TORONTO — For Kristian Tear, the key to Research In Motion Ltd.’s salvation lies in the details.

When RIM chief executive Thorsten Heins approached the longtime telecom industry executive earlier this year about joining the struggling Canadian BlackBerry maker as its chief operating officer, Mr. Tear was excited about the prospect of being part of the team that would begin writing a new chapter for the Waterloo, Ont. company.

On Monday, RIM moved one step closer to putting pen to paper on that new chapter when the company announced it would hold a press event on Jan. 30, 2013 to launch its long-delayed smartphone platform, BlackBerry 10, and its first new smartphones in more than a year.

[np-related /]

But there are details left to be ironed out before the company’s first two devices to run on BlackBerry 10 are ready to make their public debut and work their way into the hands of anxious BlackBerry fans, according to Mr. Tear.

“There are a lot of details, and the devils are in the details,” Mr. Tear said in an interview. “We have a good plan, and it’s a plan built for success and we govern that plan very thoroughly. We have war rooms where we follow up on details. It is going to be about the details, and we’re paying a lot of attention to the details.”

For RIM, BlackBerry 10 represents the chance for something of a rebirth. After years of turmoil, service outages and product delays, RIM now lags far behind rivals Apple Inc., Google Inc. and Samsung Electronics in the multibillion-dollar global smartphone market as its aging devices have fallen out of favour with consumers.

While BlackBerrys were once seen as the gold standard of reliability in the mobile world, RIM’s reputation has taken several hits over the past few years after a series of BlackBerry service outages, and the underwhelming performance of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, which was seen as incomplete and missing features after its launch in 2011.

In an effort to avoid similar accusations when BlackBerry 10 launches, Mr. Heins announced earlier this year that RIM’s new software platform would not hit the market in 2012 as planned, but would instead be pushed to the first quarter of 2013.

On Tuesday, Mr. Tear told the Associated Press that RIM plans to launch the first BlackBerry smartphones to run on the new BlackBerry 10 platform “not too long” after the company’s press event scheduled for Jan. 30, 2013.

“We already once delayed the launch to make sure that the product quality is right and the experience is the right one,” Mr. Tear said. “We have something that we believe is very unique and very differentiated versus the competition, and we put in an enormous effort in making sure that we have 110% execution in all areas.”

As RIM’s COO, overseeing everything from operational functions for handhelds and services to research and development and manufacturing and supply chain, getting BlackBerry 10 out the door and into the hands of customers is Mr. Tear’s singular focus right now.

“It’s like in Formula One [racing], you can have the best car, you can have the best driver, but if the wheel mount is not coming on and off when you have a pit stop, it doesn’t really matter,” Mr. Tear said in an interview.

“You need to have the best wheel mount on-and-off man as well. So I am driving my team and making them very conscious of this. That it is in the details and we are reviewing, checking and putting actions in place to make sure that it will be very good.”

A countdown to the dawn of a new era has finally begun for Research In Motion Ltd.

On Monday, RIM revealed it plans to hold a special event on Jan. 30, 2013 where the embattled technology giant will launch its long-delayed BlackBerry 10 operating system, at the same time unveiling two new BlackBerry smartphones.

By scheduling the launch, RIM has provided the most concrete commitment to date that the company is on track to launch a new generation of BlackBerry devices in the first quarter of next year, as chief executive Thorsten Heins has repeatedly promised investors.

For many BlackBerry fans and RIM shareholders, Jan. 30 is now circled in their calendars to mark the beginning of the next chapter for the Waterloo, Ont. company, for better or for worse.

After more years of turmoil and delays, the technology world will finally get a chance to see if RIM has what it takes to execute the turnaround its leaders — both Mr. Heins and the since-ousted CEO tandem of Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis — have been promising.

Of course, questions about whether RIM is capable of establishing itself as a legitimate third platform behind Apple Inc.’s iOS and Google Inc.’s Android, whether developers will embrace the platform en masse and whether consumers will gravitate towards the RIM’s redesigned BlackBerry devices all remain unanswered.

“Thanks to our strong partnerships with global carriers and a growing ecosystem of developers, we believe our customers will have the best experience possible with BlackBerry 10,” Mr. Heins said in a press release. “We are looking forward to getting BlackBerry 10 in the hands of our customers around the world.”

RIM has said it plans to unveil two different BlackBerry smartphones on Jan. 30 — one featuring a full touchscreen interface, and a second featuring a more traditional BlackBerry-style QWERTY keyboard — but further device specifics and pricing details remain to be seen.

It’s also unclear whether RIM plans to make the devices publicly available shortly after Jan. 30 — in a manner similar to how Apple tends to open up new iPhones for pre-order shortly after its product announcements — or if the launch date will come some time later, as RIM has done in the past.

The announcement did little to move shares of RIM on Wall Street (up roughly 3%), where RIM’s stock remains down roughly 85% from its January 2011 level, with many analysts remaining unconvinced of RIM’s ability to reassert itself as a major power in the global smartphone game against international powerhouses like Apple, Google and Samsung Electronics Ltd.

Indeed, last week, James Faucette, a financial analyst for Pacific Crest in Portland, Oregon said RIM’s new BlackBerry 10 platform would be “dead on arrival.”

[np-related /]

When RIM finally does launch the first BlackBerry devices to run on BlackBerry 10, it will mark the first wholly new smartphones from the embattled Waterloo, Ont.-based company since it overhauled its entire BlackBerry lineup in 2011.

“It’s great to see that they’re going to have the parties in January, but there are still a couple hurdles: When the units are going to be on sale and how much they’re going to cost,” said Colin Gillis, a financial analyst with BGC Partners in New York.

“It’s nothing too material and doesn’t really change our outlook.”

— With a report from Christine Dobby

Research In Motion Ltd. has made it clear that its focus is on weathering the storm of declining sales and operating losses as it works to launch a refreshed line of devices on its all-important BlackBerry 10 operating system next year.

It is no secret that sales of its current product lineup in the meantime are not likely to be great, but in an SEC filing last week the company said as much, prompting JPMorgan to revise down its BlackBerry sales estimates for the next few quarters even further.

The Waterloo, Ont.-based company reported better than expected second-quarter results last Thursday . The next day it filed a report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that included the more detailed management’s discussion and analysis section.

[np-related]

RIM said in the filing that the BB10 launch in the first quarter of next year may continue to affect its financial results as, “The Company expects lower sales of its BlackBerry 7 smartphones in the third quarter of fiscal 2013 compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2013 as customers await the new BlackBerry 10 smartphones,”

“RIM’s 6-k filing may not be more negative in tone than the earnings report but, in our opinion, it certainly brings RIM’s tough situation into sharper focus,” Rod Hall, an analyst with JPMorgan, wrote in a note to clients Wednesday.

“The company expects BB7 sales to decline sequentially in [the third quarter],” he said. “We are trimming our estimates for late fiscal 2013 to remain consistent with 6-K commentary.”

He expects RIM to sell 7 million BlackBerry smartphones during the third quarter of its fiscal year (down from 7.8 million in a previous estimate) and 9.4 million in the fourth quarter (down from 10.2 million).

The company sold 7.4 million BlackBerrys in its second quarter, it said last Thursday.

It increased its BlackBerry subscriber base to 80 million, up from 78 million the previous quarter.

JPMorgan is acting for RIM, advising it on its strategic review, so the investment bank’s analysts have suspended their ratings and price targets on its stock.

RIM shares closed at $7.97 on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Wednesday. That’s up almost 15% from its close of $6.96 last Thursday before it reported its better-than-expected quarterly earnings.

Research In Motion Ltd.’s second quarter financial results may have proven to be a pleasant surprise for some investors who feared the worst for the embattled BlackBerry maker, but there remains plenty of skepticism about the Waterloo, Ont.-based company’s long term prospects for a turnaround.

On Thursday, RIM reported second quarter financial results which shocked Wall Street with losses that weren’t as steep as some analysts had expected. RIM said revenue for the quarter was US$2.9-billion with an operating loss of US$142-million or 27¢ per share. Analysts had been expecting RIM to post US$2.5-billion in sales and a loss of 47¢ per share.

As a result, shares of the Waterloo, Ont.-based technology firm jumped as much as 25% after hours, a welcome sign for investors who have watched RIM’s shares lose two thirds of their value over the past year alone.

The stock was up 9.9% in Toronto, 9.1% in New York at midday Friday.

[np-related /]

Still, with the holiday shopping season fast approaching, RIM’s aging line of BlackBerry devices will face overwhelming competition from Apple Inc.’s new iPhone 5 and high end devices running on Google Inc.’s Android software in the coming months.

Indeed, RIM chief executive Thorsten Heins told investors on Thursday that RIM is expecting another operating loss for the current quarter.

While the first BlackBerry devices to run on RIM’s new BlackBerry 10 operating system — the linchpin of the company’s turnaround strategy — still aren’t scheduled to be released until the first quarter of calendar 2013, some analysts believe that RIM’s ability to grow its subscriber base over the past quarter (from 78 million to 80 million BlackBerry users) shows there may be money to be made as subscribers around the world upgrade from older BlackBerrys to RIM’s current BlackBerry 7 devices.

“The new management team is executing by maintaining the BlackBerry subscriber base, managing costs and cash and seemingly readying an early C2013 BB10 global platform launch,” National Bank financial analyst Kris Thompson wrote in a note to clients on Friday.

“This performance is nothing short of shocking as RIM has found a formula to entice its global carrier customers to sell product. RIM is offering aggressive BB7 pricing and may be discounting monthly network service infrastructure fees.”

RIM said it shipped 7.4 million BlackBerry devices in the three months ended Sept. 1, 2012, a dip of about 5% from the previous quarter, according to Mr. Thompson, who said that the roughly $230 ASP (average sale price) at which RIM sold its BlackBerrys was ahead of expectations.

Mr. Thompson raised his price target on RIM to $12/sh with an ‘outperform’ rating, up from an $8/sh and a ‘sector perform’ rating, adding that “we are more comfortable that the stock has found a short-term bottom.”

“Our thesis has been that RIM’s [subscriber] base would enter a period of accelerating decline leading to lower service cash flow to support BB10 transition plans,” he said. “We are now taking a leap and expecting management will continue to take necessary steps to maintain the [subscriber] base ahead of the BB10 launch.”

Mr. Thompson said the key risk to his estimates is RIM’s ability to have the new BlackBerry devices certified with carriers in a timely fashion, a process which Mr. Heins told investors on Thursday is set to begin next month.

However, not all analysts are convinced RIM will be able to execute a turnaround. Many believe the company has fallen too far behind rivals like Apple and Samsung, and that eventually Mr. Heins and his executive team will be forced to either break up the company into pieces or look for a buyer in an effort to unlock shareholder value.

“While RIM management remains committed to launching new BB10 smartphones in Q1/C2013, we do not believe BB10 devices will turn around its struggling business as high-ARPU consumers commit to competing ecosystems this holiday season,” Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley wrote in a note to clients on Friday.

“With a very low probability the market will support RIM’s new mobile computing system, we believe RIM will eventually need to sell the company.”

Canaccord’s analysts maintained their ‘hold’ rating on the stock with an $8 price target.

For CIBC financial analyst Todd Coupland, while RIM shares will likely rally on the business stabilization and the impending launch of BlackBerry 10, questions still remain about the public’s appetite for the BB10 BlackBerrys and whether RIM is capable of taking market share from either Apple or Samsung.

“RIM’s share price is clearly rallying sharply on these results and the news earlier this week of fairly positive reviews for BB10 features such as Flow, Hub, Peek, and the new browser,” Mr. Coupland wrote in a note to clients on Friday.

“The important unknown is the sustainability of this recovery and how broadly will BB10 accepted World-wide. Early input from our carrier contact suggests that BB10 will benefit from upgrades from existing BlackBerry subscribers to higher-end Bolds. What is not clear is whether BB10 will have the appeal to win back lost market share from Samsung and Apple.”

Mr. Coupland retained his ‘sector underperform’ rating on the stock with an $8 price target.

For analysts with Raymond James –which maintains a ‘market perform’ on RIM shares — initial impressions of RIM’s new BlackBerry 10 user interface, which was on display this week at the company’s BlackBerry Jam Americas developer conference in San Jose, were positive, but concerns about the future of the BlackBerry ecosystem remain.

“We thought the event lacked buzz, likely a reflection of RIM’s US market share dwindling to 9.5% (comScore MobiLens survey, 3-month ending July 2012) and the announced delay in June of BB10 to C1Q13 did not help,” financial analyst Steven Li wrote in a note to clients on Friday.

“Given RIM’s successful device seeding program to date, we believe it is possible to have 50-60k BB10 apps around launch time (30k PlayBook apps readily portable + 20-30k BB10 apps). This compares to iOS (700k+), Android (675k+) and Windows (100k+) — an uphill battle.”

On Thursday, Mr. Heins told investors that his review of the company’s strategic options — including the licensing of the BB10 platform or other RIM technology to other manufacturers — remains ongoing.

“In our view, a sale would clearly unlock value. In the meantime however, the deteriorating fundamentals likely keep RIM’s stock range bound until we get more visibility around BB10’s nascent ecosystem,” Mr. Li said.

Correction (Oct. 1): Michael Walkley is the sole author of the Canaccord Genuity report referenced in this article. A previous version of this story incorrectly attributed the report to additional authors. This story has been updated to reflect that change.

Research In Motion Ltd. shocked Wall Street on Thursday, reporting stronger than expected financial results as the embattled BlackBerry maker continues its quest to revive its flagging fortunes and return to relevance in the smartphone industry.

Shares of RIM jumped as much as 25% after hours on the Nasdaq Stock Market after RIM reported second quarter earnings that surpassed low analyst expectations, with losses that weren’t as bad as some observers anticipated.

Some analysts praised RIM executives for managing the Waterloo, Ont.-based technology company through what continues to be a rough time for the company. But chief executive Thorsten Heins was quick to point out that the struggling smartphone maker is not out of the woods yet as it looks ahead to the launch of the first devices running the company’s new software, BlackBerry 10, next year.

With the holiday shopping season fast approaching, RIM’s aging line of BlackBerry devices will face overwhelming competition from Apple Inc.’s new iPhone 5 and high end devices running on Google Inc.’s Android software. Indeed, RIM is expecting another operating loss for the current quarter.

[np-related]

Last quarter, RIM announced it would be trimming roughly 5,000 jobs from its global workforce. On Thursday, RIM officials said the company is roughly halfway through those reductions — with about 2,000 job cuts coming in the second quarter — and that it remains on track to finish the reductions by the end of the fiscal year.

Shares of RIM rose earlier this week after Mr. Heins told attendees at the company’s BlackBerry Jam Americas developer conference in San Jose that it had grown the global BlackBerry user base to 80 million, up from 78 million in the previous quarter.

Although Mr. Heins did not provide any new details about when RIM plans to launch the first BlackBerry smartphones to run on BlackBerry 10 — the company has only said that the devices will launch in the first quarter of next calendar year — he did say the company has plans to launch multiple devices on the new platform next year.

RIM said revenue for the three months ending Sept. 1, 2012 was US$2.9-billion, up from the US$2.8-billion the company generated in the previous quarter, but a 31% drop over the US$4.2-billion generated in the same quarter a year ago.

RIM said it booked an operating loss of US$142-million or 27¢ per share. Analysts had been expecting RIM to post US$2.5-billion in sales and a loss of 47¢ per share.

The company also added US$100-million to its cash reserves — which stood at US$2.3-billion by the end of the quarter —and sold more BlackBerry smartphones than expected (7.4 million versus an estimated 6.9 million).

“It’s great to see that the cash balance didn’t get impaired,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst with BGC Partners in New York.

“It wasn’t such a disaster. There’s still a demand for these phones.”

However, he noted that putting RIM’s 7.4 million in sales in perspective, Apple Inc. sold 5 million iPhone 5s during the first weekend its new model was on sale.

“They’re still in decline and it’s not clear that 10 is going to solve everything. But at least they’ve got a shot now,” Mr. Gillis said.

Peter Misek, an equity analyst at Jefferies & Co., also praised RIM management’s ability to keep costs in check during the quarter when everyone expected them to “burn some cash.”

“Obviously management did a good job, they really did. But now they have another three months where they have to Houdini it again and it doesn’t get any easier in the February quarter because they’ll be launching BB10 devices at the same time as they’re trying to [prop up] sales of BlackBerry 7,” Mr. Misek said.

Once again, the company provided no guidance on its future quarters (apart from saying there would be “continued pressure on operating results for the remainder of the fiscal year”).

Despite the big jump in Thursday’s after hours session, RIM shares are still down 68% from last September.

Read our coverage of RIM’s Q2 earnings conference call as it happened below.

Our full story on the BlackBerry maker’s better-than-expected financial results can be found here .

Update 5:59 p.m.: RBC analyst asks how RIM plans to convince users to pick up BlackBerry devices before they even walk into a carrier. Mr. Heins says it’s going to be about educating consumers prior to launch. BlackBerry 7 is still a competitive smartphone, Mr. Heins says. Mr. Heins says he’s confident RIM will manage through the transition and the pressures it is facing.

Update 5:58p.m.: Coremark analyst asks about the device portfolio for BB10. Mr. Heins says there will be substantial reduction in the size of the portfolio, and that RIM is really “pruning the tree.” Sounds like there’s only going to be a full touchscreen device and a QWERTY device in the BB10 portfolio.

Update 5:56 p.m.: Citi analyst asks about the net subscriber additions, and whether there’s a single region that has helped to drive the additions. Mr. Heins says a lot of the strength is due to BBM, which is “kicking it.” Growth comes from Asia-Pac, Indonesia, South Africa, Phillipines. “These are real new customers we’re signing up,” Mr. Heins says.

Update 5:55 p.m.: Evercore analyst asks for more specifics on outlook for the November quarter, and whether the company plans to burn some channel inventory in the quarter.

Mr. Heins says that as RIM approaches the holiday quarter, things are going to get tougher and more challenging. BlackBerry 7 will need to compete against top Android devices and the new iPhone 5 for attention this holiday season, and that’s going to hurt RIM’s business.

Update 5:50 p.m.: BMO analyst asks about the ARPU pressure and whether it’s getting better, and then a second question about the service outage that RIM suffered last week.

Mr. Heins says that RIM’s service disruption was not an outage. No messages were lost. RIM takes this very seriously, and we want it to be 100%, and the disruption affected 4.6 million users “max,” according to Mr. Heins. RIM is still investing in its network, it’s not cutting costs there.

Mr. Bidulka says the one favourability of the ARPU this quarter is the increase in subscribers.

Update 5:48 p.m.: Morgan Stanley analyst asks about the services revenue, and whether RIM is losing money on devices (selling them below cost) while services business has a higher gross margin. Also wants to know if BB7 is a high majority of the 7.4 million units sold this quarter.

Mr. Heins says it is fair to assume that 99.9% of devices sold are BlackBerry 7, only BlackBerry 6 sales you see are refurbished devices or replacements. RIM is “very successful” with the Bold 9900. Mr. Bidulka says RIM doesn’t split out sales of devices and services … says RIM is seeing pricing pressure on the device business.

Update 5:44 p.m.: UBS wants to know about how RIM plans to excite consumers and deal with the Bring Your Own Device trend. Mr. Heins says that with entertainment, multimedia and browsing, the BlackBerry 10 is leading in HTML5, and he believes there will be a lot of elements in BB10 that will excite the consumers. “We need to attract the consumer in the enterprise,” Mr. Heins says.

Regarding a question on the working capital and the effect of marketing budgets there, Mr. Bidulka says the company continues to work on ways to manage it leading up to BB10 launch and to drive savings through the CORE program leading up to the global launch. It’s about maintaining that financial liquidity and targeting on the cash position as RIM works through the transition, Mr. Bidulka says.

Update 5:42 p.m.: Barclays analyst wants to know about ARPU (average revenue per unit) and its decline. Mr. Bidulka says that as RIM drives the sell in, the company is working with the carriers to get BlackBerrys into different tiered plans, and that’s having an impact on the ARPU.

Update 5:39 p.m.: Scotiabank analyst asks about the enterprise. With BlackBerry 10, enterprises are going to need to run two versions of BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), one for BB10 and one for BB7, analyst wants to know if there’s any concern that requiring two BES servers will slow down BB10 adoption.

Mr. Heins says RIM is working on a unified architecture to manage BB10, BB7 and other non-BlackBerry devices.

Update 5:37 p.m.: Credit Suisse wants an update about the CORE program and BlackBerry 10 launch internationally. Mr. Bidulka says that RIM has realized $350-million across the company’s cost structure. Mr. Heins says that BlackBerry 10 will be launched globally. RIM’s internal resources are able to manage a global launch, Mr. Heins says, adding that he’s specifically satisfied with the feedback from carriers worldwide. Mr. Heins says BlackBerry 10 is a platform, and the company plans to launch a “portfolio” of devices for it.

Update 5:35 p.m.: Question from Goldman Sachs. What percentage of shipments are BlackBerry 7 and where is that likely to go in this quarter? Mr. Heins says most of the devices are BlackBerry 7, but doesn’t offer specifics. “We got quite some good feedback on the Bold 9900,” Mr. Heins says.

Update 5:33 p.m.: CIBC analyst asks how many of RIM’s 80 million subscribers RIM believes it can upgrade to BB10 after the launch. Mr. Heins declines to give specific numbers, but says RIM believes with BlackBerry 10 it’s not just about upgrading existing BlackBerry users, but that the company can actually take market share from rivals and expand the smartphone market to non-smartphone users.

Update 5:30 p.m.: That does it for the prepared comments. Analyst comments are up now. First question is about how quickly BlackBerry 10 can address the low end of the market, or will there be another wave of BlackBerry 7 devices to address the entry level portion of the market?

Mr. Heins: We always have a product mix in the those markets, and RIM just launched a couple of devices in the entry level market. BlackBerry 10 will be proliferating into the mid-level of the market by the fall of next year, but RIM could have an entry level BlackBerry 10 device in the market sometime next year.

Update 5:27 p.m.: Of the 5,000 job cuts RIM announced last quarter, the company made roughly 2,000 of them in Q2, and another 500 have already taken place in Q3, which means RIM is roughly halfway through its job cuts, Mr. Bidulka said. The company’s global headcount is now 14,500, and RIM expects the remainder of its job cuts to be wrapped up by the end of the fiscal year.

Update 5:26 p.m.: On the CORE program – RIM believes it has embarked on changes that will save US$800-million of the US$1-billion it plans to save this year as a result of cost optimization, Mr. Bidulka said. RIM has already realized US$350-million of those savings, he added.

Manufacturing and supply chain is a focus of the CORE program; RIM wants to streamline manufacturing, by dropping from 10 to three manufacturing sites. RIM is down to 5 sites and 2 completion centres. RIM expects to finish the outsourcing of its product repair operations by the end of Q4. One of the results of this is the establishment of RIM’s first walk-in service centre (which I believe is in Waterloo).

Update 5:23 p.m.: Reduction in CapEx reflects RIM’s changing strategy towards resource management, inventory and R&D, Mr. Bidulka says. Cash conversion cycle and reduced inventory balances contributed to the US$100-million cash bump.

Update 5:20 p.m.: Colin Gillis, financial analyst with BGC Partners in New York, tells Christine Dobby:

Update 5:18 p.m.: Up now is Brian Bidulka, RIM’s chief financial officer. Sales outside the U.S., Canada and UK were 58% of revenue, down from 63% in the previous quarter. Sales growth in Canada and the U.K. this quarter — UK sales jumped from 9% to 12% — Canada accounted for roughly 8% of RIM’s overall sales.

Update 5:17 p.m.: Mr. Heins says that RIM has had “productive” discussions with CEOs of possible partners about potential strategic and licensing opportunities. “Companies I meet with understand RIM remains strong and relevant …” he says. However, he stops short of offering any specifics, only adding that the Board of Directors is taking this strategic review “very seriously.”

As for RIM’s outlook, Mr. Heins sees a very aggressive environment in terms of pricing, and the company expects that to continue. RIM believes the CORE program will help, but price plays a major role in the smartphone market today. In the coming months, our goal will be to deliver “steady, incremental” progress. Change is tough for any company, Mr. Heins says, but particularly difficult in an industry that moves as quickly as the smartphone industry.

Update 5:14 p.m.: Cool graphic of RIM’s cash position whipped up by our graphics department:

Update 5:14 p.m.: CFO Brian Bidulka is in charge of the CORE program, which RIM hopes will help it cut $1-billion in costs this year, and Mr. Heins said he is pleased with results, adding that RIM will be “leaner” when the CORE program wraps up.

Update 5:11 p.m.: Mr. Heins says that carrier lab tests of BlackBerry 10 will begin next month.

Update 5:10 p.m.: Peter Misek from Jefferies & Co. tells Christine Dobby:

Update 5:09 p.m.: “We not only understand social networking, we embrace it,” Mr. Heins says, as he discusses the growth of BlackBerry Messenger (60 million users) and Facebook on BlackBerry (60 million users). Mr. Heins is now going over many of the features of BlackBerry 10, which RIM hopes will help differentiate it from other smartphone platforms with a different approach to organizing information.

Update 5:08 p.m.: RIM has maintained a disciplined approach to cost cutting, and costs are going down in key areas, Mr. Heins said. BlackBerry 10 remains on track, he says again. The entire company is “energized and excited” for the launch of the first BlackBerry 10 smartphone, Mr. Heins says, reiterating comments he made at RIM’s developer conference earlier this week.

Update 5:05 p.m.: Mr. Heins says “It is important that we maintain or grow our subscriber base,” upgrade customers to BlackBerry 7 and grow cash position. Mr. Heins said RIM has accomplished those goals, growing subscriber base to above 80 million users. RIM has launched major upgrade programs in the U.S., U.K. and Canada.

Update 5:03 p.m.: Will be interesting to see what Mr. Heins has to say about an update on BlackBerry 10 devices and launch date, beyond his comments this week at BlackBerry Jam Americas that the platform is “on track” for its launch in Q1 of calendar 2013.

Update 5:01 p.m.: Call has started. CEO Thorsten Heins will be up first.

Update 4:59 p.m.: We’ll have quotes in a few minutes, but the general theme we’re hearing from analysts is that RIM’s management has done a good job of managing through a tough time, but that everything still hinges on BlackBerry 10.

Update 4:56 p.m.: Wouldn’t it be neat if RIM started using the song from the developer music video that debuted at BlackBerry Jam Americas earlier this week as its hold music? You know, this one .

Update 4:42 p.m.: RIM shares now up 17% ($1.23) after hours.

Update 4:38 p.m.: RIM’s earnings conference call is expected to start around 5 p.m. We’ll be providing live coverage throughout. You can listen to the call here: http://www.rim.com/investors/events/

Update 4:37 p.m.: Tech Desk’s own Christine Dobby has a full story on RIM’s earnings posted over here .

Update 4:35 p.m.: As some observers have pointed out on Twitter, it doesn’t appear RIM has provided an update on how many of the 5,000 job cuts it announced last quarter have taken place. Look for Mr. Heins to address that on the call this afternoon.

Update 4:33 p.m.: RIM expects to post another loss in fiscal Q3, which can’t come as a surprise to too many analysts with BlackBerry 10 devices still not expected to ship until the first calendar quarter of next year. Indeed, RIM is still facing a number of challenges. From the release:

RIM also plans to spend aggressively on marketing BlackBerry 7 devices in the coming months, according to the release, and will likely continue to spend heavily on promotion as the company draws closer to the launch of BlackBerry 10.

Update 4:22 p.m.: RIM announced previously this week that it had grown the global BlackBerry user base to 80 million, up from 78 million at the end of the last quarter, at a time when many analysts believed the company would report its user base would begin to decline.

For those of you keeping score at home, RIM shares are up about 13% on the Nasdaq after hours.

Update 4:20 p.m.: RIM increased its cash position in the quarter to US$2.3-billion, a roughly US$100-million jump from the US$2.2-billion in holdings the company possessed at the end of the previous quarter.

Update 4:18 p.m.: RIM said adjusted net loss for the quarter was US$142-million, or roughly US$0.27 cents per share, which came in well above analyst expectations of roughly US$0.47 cents per share. RIM said the net loss excludes the impact of pre-tax charges of US$136-million related to the company’s current cost optimization and resource efficiency plan, designed to save the company as must as US$1-billion by the end of the year.

Update 4:16 p.m.: RIM CEO Thorsten Heins, from the press release:

Update 4:15 p.m.: RIM said it shipped 7.4 million BlackBerry smartphones and 130,000 PlayBook tablets in the quarter. GAAP net loss for the quarter was US$235-million, or roughly US$0.45 per share diluted. Las quarter, RIM posted a net loss of US$518-million, or US$0.99 per share diluted.

Update 4:12 p.m.: Shares of RIM are spiking in after hours trading, up 14% at last glance.

Update: 4:10 p.m.: The results are out, and it seems at first blush that RIM has topped analyst expectations. Revenue for the quarter was US$2.9-billion, topping analyst expectations of about US$2.5-billion, although that’s still down 31% over the same period last year.

Click here to access the live blog from a mobile device .

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History appeared to be repeating itself in the worst way for Research In Motion Ltd. on Friday when the BlackBerry maker suffered an embarrassing outage just as competitor Apple Inc. trotted out its latest, greatest smartphone.

As fans camped outside of Apple retail stores hoping to be among the first to get their hands on an iPhone 5, some BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa looked down at their phones to find they couldn’t send or receive messages, a problem RIM acknowledged through social media early Friday morning.

The outage lasted a maximum of three hours, according to a message from chief executive Thorsten Heins posted on RIM’s United Kingdom website by 11:30 a.m. ET.

“Our apologies to any customers impacted by the BlackBerry service issue today. We can confirm that services have been restored and are now operating normally,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement from the company.

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Yet, the timing echoed the worst service blackout in the Waterloo, Ont. company’s history in October 2011, which happened to coincide with Apple’s launch of the iPhone 4S.

As RIM apologized, Apple enjoyed another successful launch. Some Shoppers in London, Englan had camped out for a week in a queue that snaked around the block. In Hong Kong, the first customers were greeted by staff cheering, clapping, chanting “iPhone 5! iPhone 5!” and high-fiving them as they were escorted one-by-one through the front door.

The iPhone 5 is thinner, lighter, has a taller screen, faster processor, updated software and can work on faster “fourth generation” mobile networks.

Apple received two million orders in the first 24 hours of announcing its release date, more than twice the number for the iPhone 4S in the same period when that phone launched a year ago.

Analysts have estimated Apple will ship as many as 10 million of the new iPhones by the end of September.

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After facing criticism for the handling of last year’s more serious outage, RIM seemed to take steps to address the latest problem more promptly. RIM posted updates on social networking websites Facebook and Twitter apologizing to users and stating the company was investigating the cause.

But the company’s shares still took a hit, slipping 7.4% to close at $6.25 on the Toronto Stock Exchange, their lowest level in nine years.

“They’ve probably done as well as they can with this. It was a short outage and the CEO responded within a reasonably timely manner.” said Jen Evans, the founder and CEO of Sequentia Environics, a social media marketing and consulting company. “It really is miserable timing for them.”

Mr. Heins said no data or messages were lost in the outage, which affected up to six per cent of the company’s user base.

In its last earnings report on June 28, the company said it had 78 million BlackBerry subscribers, meaning about 4.7 million users could have encountered troubles Friday.

This outage appeared to have been shorter and more contained than the last, which began in Europe and spread to many of the company’s then 70 million BlackBerry users. The 2011 outage lasted for several days in some areas, although it was limited to about a day or so in Canada and the United States.RIM management was also slower to take its message to the public last year. Although the company issued several service updates about the problems, it was several days before then co-chief executives Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie publicly addressed the blackout.

Friday’s outage was “very bad timing for the company given the iPhone 5 frenzy,” said Peter Misek, an analyst for Jefferies & Co.

“Regardless, until they launch new phones, it could be difficult,” he said, referencing the company’s long-awaited launch of new devices on its BlackBerry 10 operating system, which are now expected in the first quarter of next year.

Mr. Misek said the service interruption could have been due to upgrades related to the new BB10 operating system, although RIM has yet to disclose a cause.

Mike Abramsky, principal at technology marketing and strategy firm Red Team Inc., said RIM is not alone in facing service interruptions, pointing to an outage that affected Amazon.com this summer.

RIM has generally improved its services, he said, and the timing of the latest glitch was unfortunate.

“The tech pundits jump all over it and it just offers another round of RIM beating,” he said, adding, “I think there are bigger things that RIM has to address.”

With files from The Associated Press

Two months into his new job, Gist Inc. founder T.A. McCann is left with something of a bittersweet feeling.

Last February, Mr. McCann’s Seattle-based contact management software firm was scooped up by Research In Motion Ltd. Since then, Mr. McCann and his team have been hard at work changing the way BlackBerry users think about their contacts and address books.

Using Gist’s technology — which sifts through a user’s various email address books and social media contacts to create a master list that is then organized and prioritized based on a variety of factors — Mr. McCann and his team set about building the Contacts application for RIM’s PlayBook tablet.

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A few months ago, with the Waterloo, Ont.-based company focusing on its forthcoming BlackBerry 10 operating system, RIM took the next step and installed Mr. McCann as the company’s new vice-president of BlackBerry Messenger and social communities.

In addition to building out the Contacts app for BlackBerry 10, the former Gist team will also be overseeing the BlackBerry’s integration with Facebook, Twitter and other social media properties, as well as instant messaging, identity and location services.

However, as part of this move, RIM announced on Tuesday that it would be shuttering Gist, marking the end of a four-year journey for Mr. McCann — a former Microsoft Corp. executive who once ran the software giant’s Exchange email business — as he leaves to focus on BlackBerry 10 alongside the rest of RIM.

Earlier this week, FP Tech Desk editor Matt Hartley had a chance to talk to Mr. McCann about his new role, about the decision to shut down Gist and about the future of BlackBerry 10.

FP:How did the company come to this decision to shutter Gist?

TM: We started Gist to build what we considered to be the most advanced social contact manager ever done, and when we were approached and acquired by Blackberry, we thought, ‘Wow, now we can bring this to a social context and bring it to tens of millions of users.’ So it has really been a slow transition and a focus on more and more BlackBerry and more of that native experience. This is just a logical time [to shut down Gist], it was going to happen at some point in time and this was a logical time when we could announce it to users and we could give them enough time to move their contacts into lots of other solutions and really prep ourselves for a really big solid push toward BB10.

FP:You’ve got a pretty big mandate with your new role at RIM, overseeing BBM and RIM’s other social initiatives. Can you say a little about the new role and what kind of opportunities it represents?

TM: It’s been about two months now, so I’m now in charge of BBM and what we call social communities. So that includes Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare, all of the major social communities that we already have on the platform. I’m still spending a lot of my time on how to make the contact manager incredible. In that way, it does a few things for me. One, it allows me to see a very broad social perspective. It also allows me to think on a very global level. There’s a lot of incredible things happening in social communities around the world that we may not see as much in North America, for example in Indonesia, Brazil, Thailand, Phillipines. Places where there are new social paradigms happening, so I get to learn about that.

FP:How do you see the state of the contact manager and of BBM, and the rest of your domain?

TM: When it comes to contact managers as a whole, the world has evolved very quickly over the last four years to become very much more mobile and very much more social. So in that sense, there’s a real opportunity for us, or anybody really, to create an amazing contact manager to aggregate all of your contacts, to prioritize those contacts and to understand them deeply; to understand that a Facebook post about a vacation or a LinkedIn post about a new job or maybe a tweet about something is what a user is interested in. We certainly made a solid attempt at it at Gist, but I still think that nobody has done a native contact manager that does that. No one has nailed it yet.

FP:What’s your big picture vision for what contacts and social integration will look like on BlackBerry 10?

TM: All of us are trying to build stronger relationships with more people in the world. It’s what we do as humans. And yet, there’s information spread out all over the place, and it’s only going to be more contacts with more information in more places, that’s our future. So the vision is really to say, can I bring together all the people I care about ­— effectively, my contacts — can I understand them deeply? Which means, can I get all the information that’s about them that they want to share with me? Can I prioritize that appropriately? One form of prioritization may be who is more important to me algorithmically. It may be, who am I meeting with today? It may be people who are in the news today. All of those are forms of who is most important to me. Should I call, text, post to Facebook wall? Because we all have lots of contacts, we need a form, or multiple forms of prioritization, so those themes of aggregation, prioritization and then direct communication are things which all fall into the vision and overlap in all the products that I’m in charge of now.

FP:When you go out to work with partner companies in the social media world and beyond, what is the perception of RIM and of BlackBerry 10?

TM: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter certainly have lots of things they could be working on, but they’re choosing to spend a lot of time with us, and I think they’re choosing to spend a lot of time with us for two reasons: One, is the BB6 and BB7 business is very strong internationally, it’s got a good footprint in the United States and North America, but it’s growing very rapidly in many emerging countries, and they’re all very interested in expanding their footprint there. As you look to BB10, we’re bringing a lot of the same deep integration extending on those same themes of unified inbox, very rich contact management, very rich notifications and a beautiful native application itself to do all the things that they do. Over the last two months, since I’ve taken over, the engagement level from all three has increased quite substantially, the ideas of what we can all do together have increased substantially and I feel like we’re just getting going.

With sales of Research In Motion Ltd.’s iconic BlackBerry smartphones in decline, the Waterloo, Ont.-based technology company saw its share of the worldwide mobile phone market fall further in the second quarter as sales of rival devices from Apple Inc. and Samsung Group Ltd. continue to surge.

On Tuesday, market research firm Gartner Inc. said RIM’s share of the worldwide mobile phone market fell 1.1 percentage points, down to just 1.9% in the second quarter of 2012, down from 3% in the same quarter last year.

For RIM, the latest disappointing numbers come just one day after chief executive Thorsten Heins told Bloomberg in an interview that the embattled BlackBerry maker’s forthcoming operating system, known as BlackBerry 10, is ready to be licensed to other manufacturers.

Although RIM plans to launch a new line of its own BlackBerry devices running on BlackBerry 10 in the first quarter of 2013, Mr. Heins has said that the company was examining various strategic alternatives in an effort to kickstart a turnaround which included licensing BlackBerry technology to other manufacturers.

RIM has already licensed the QNX platform — which powers the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and forms the basis for BlackBerry 10 — to automotive companies and is hoping other electronics manufacturers will be interested in licensing BlackBerry 10.

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Indeed, it seems the capital markets are hoping RIM is able to carve out a future as a software company as well; earlier this month, the company’s shares spiked, rising as much as 13% on Aug. 8 after Jeffries & Co. speculated Samsung could be interested in licensing BB10, according to Bloomberg.

Shares of RIM have fallen by roughly 75% over the past year amid a series of product delays — including BlackBerry 10 which was initially supposed to launch this year — declining sales and the continued dominance of Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s various handsets powered by Google Inc.’s Android software.

With RIM’s share of the global smartphone market continuing to fall, the company is hoping to cut costs and generate new revenue streams. RIM has announced it will slash 5,000 employees — nearly one-third of its global workforce — this year as part of an effort to cut US$1-billion in costs.

While the Gartner numbers appeared grim for RIM, both Apple and Samsung saw sales of their mobile devices grow year-over-year, while both companies also increased their share of the market.

Samsung maintained its position as the world leader in mobile phone sales, seeing its share of the worldwide market jump to 21.6%, up from 16.3% in the same quarter a year ago as sales grew from fewer than 70 million units a year earlier to more than 90 million units this year.

Although Apple sales fell 12.6% from the first quarter of 2012 to roughly 29 million units sold in the second quarter, demand for the iPhone was 47% higher than the same period last year, and the company is likely gearing up for a big second half with the next iPhone widely believed to be unveiled in early September.

Overall, the worldwide market for mobile devices reached 419 million units in the second quarter of 2012, a 2.3% decline over the same period last year. According to Gartner, smartphone sales accounted for 36.7% of all mobile handsets.

“Demand slowed further in the second quarter of 2012,” Gartner principal research analyst Anshul Gupta said in a statement.

“The challenging economic environment and users postponing upgrades to take advantage of high-profile device launches and promotions available later in the year slowed demand across markets… high profile smartphone launches from key manufacturers such as the anticipated Apple iPhone 5, along with Chines manufacturers pushing 3G and preparing for major launches in the second half of 2012, will drive the smartphone market upward. However, feature phones will continue to see pressure.”

Research In Motion Ltd. shares surged in early trading Wednesday before pulling back to close 3.3% higher after a report the troubled BlackBerry maker is trying to revive strategic discussions with Samsung Electronics Co.

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek told clients that with RIM’s strategic review likely nearing an end, it appears to be realizing what Wall Street has been saying for some time: They desperately need a partner.

Samsung was rumoured to be interested in licensing RIM’s new BB10 operating system (OS) at the end of 2011, but indecision by management at the BlackBerry maker apparently caused talks to break off.

“When RIM’s new management reinitiated talks, we think RIM’s weakened positioned and the later time frame led Samsung to delay any decisions until after the launch of BB10,” Mr. Misek said.

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“While we think RIM’s weakened positioned could lead to favourable licensing terms for Samsung, we think Samsung would fear being in the same situation with RIM in a few years.”

The analyst said he believes Samsung remains undecided as it is concerned about both Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. eventually moving to bring together their software ecosystems and make smartphones of their own.

Nonetheless, he believes buying RIM could be the best option for a company that needs to address its OS issues. Samsung does have its own platform, Bada, but it has not received widespread support from developers and carriers don’t appear to be big fans.

“BB10 would provide insurance in case Microsoft and/or Google vertically integrate,” Mr. Misek said, noting BB10 has generally been well received, bringing both security and bandwidth consumption benefits that Android and Windows lack. “Samsung would have a compelling offering for the enterprise.”

However, the South Korean electronics maker doesn’t make acquisitions often and its last big purchase (SanDisk) didn’t end well.

Mr. Misek also highlighted the subpar browsing performance on RIM’s PlayBook 2.O OS.

“While RIM is currently trying to change, the company has not had much of a software culture (which was a major reason for its market share loss),” the analyst said.

The stock closed up 3.3% at $7.56 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

I recently attended a corporate town hall. As part of the Q&A, the CEO stood up and said, “Execution is about results, everything else is a luxury we can not afford at this time.” The sub-text of his statement was that strategy is about thinking (i.e. inaction, indecision) and execution is about getting things done (i.e. something more important). This CEO is not alone. Under considerable pressure to hit aggressive financial targets while minimizing risk, most managers will batten down the hatches and focus on execution. Is this smart business?

Strategic banality

No, but it is understandable given the state of strategy development in many organizations . Many firms have generic corporate and product strategies that are based on frothy and self-evident statements such as “Our strategy is to become the market leader” or “Our strategy is to maximize customer satisfaction.” Not surprisingly, these strategies often do not produce the desired results; they are not differentiated, aligned with the enterprise’s core capabilities and well understood internally. Deploying ineffectual “strategies” can be worse than having no strategy at all, as the process to create them depletes finite resources, uses up valuable time and often leads to employee cynicism. No wonder many results-driven leaders are jaded.

On the surface, the view that strategy is less important than execution is hard to refute. Virtually every manager would agree that you cannot achieve good results without having good execution; similarly, most would concur that having a good strategy alone is no surefire formula for success. But too many people jump to the incorrect conclusion that this makes execution more important than strategy.

Back to basics

Experienced leaders know that strategy is more than clichés. Rather, it is the series of strategic choices (based on thorough analysis and deliberation) organizations make on where to compete and how to win such that they maximize long-term competitiveness and shareholder value at minimal risk. Within this paradigm, execution is about producing results in the context of those decisions. The reality for most companies is that they can’t have great execution without superior strategy. Two well-known examples illustrate this.

Smart phones

It is a foregone conclusion that Apple bested RIM in the battle for smart phone supremacy. Clearly, a large part of Apple’s success traced to its outstanding execution. However, Apple also made definitive and more coherent strategic decisions about where it would play and how it would compete. These included better choices about its target customers and how to reach them; its value proposition in terms of products and features; and the superior capabilities it needed to deliver that proposition to those customers. It was these superior strategic choices that delivered the profitability, brand loyalty and supply chain agility that enabled Apple to out-execute RIM.

Airlines

Another example can be found in the competitive U.S. airline industry. Southwest Airlines has outperformed peers for decades primarily due to their more defensible and profitable corporate strategy. Southwest has a more defined target market (the point-to-point economy traveler), a more compelling value proposition (superior price, convenience, and experience), and a closer fit between the value proposition and the capabilities needed to deliver it (e.g., maintaining a simpler fleet, running a point-to-point operation). Of course, the company is a terrific operator in its own right. But having a better strategy made it possible for Southwest to consistently out-execute its competitors. Unless other airlines improved their strategies, they will never be able to use execution to overcome Southwest’s inherent advantages.

The execution trap

Firms can fall easily into an execution mind-set – to their peril. Market leaders looking to protect their hard-won market share (initially based on a superior strategy) and fully exploit legacy assets will be biased towards execution to drive incremental improvement and minimize risk. Ignoring strategy, however, will leave leaders blind to disruptive products and technologies. Followers, on the other hand, often succumb to a different kind of cognitive trap. To grow, these firms will mistakenly look to out-execute the leaders by mimicking their strategies through the flawed use of benchmarking and best practice tools . Yet, no matter how well followers execute they will still be unable to challenge the leaders who possess superior and proprietary capabilities, technologies and cultures. Followers will usually be better off finding a more distinctive and compelling strategy.

Companies need a good strategy to have first-rate execution. Developing a winning strategy takes time, and requires systematic analytical thinking plus the courage to challenge prevailing assumptions around customer needs, technology etc. The ability to execute with excellence depends on how well the strategy is aligned with stakeholders as well as how it fits with the culture and capabilities. For firms in a rut, refining the strategy may hold the key to unlocking better execution and producing breakthrough results.

Mitchell Osak is managing director of Quanta Consulting Inc. Quanta has delivered a variety of strategy and organizational transformation consulting and educational solutions to global Fortune 1000 organizations. Mitchell can be reached at mosak@quantaconsulting.com

Just as shareholders who attended Research In Motion Ltd.’s annual general meeting on Tuesday expressed a quiet frustration with the progress of the embattled BlackBerry maker, the social media reaction to the Waterloo, Ont.-based company’s annual presentation with investors lacked an explosive backlash.

Indeed, according to new data from Postmedia Network Inc.’s Infomart , negative tweets about RIM remained constant on Tuesday compared to the days leading up to the AGM.

Infomart’s data showed that roughly 7% of tweets about RIM sent between midnight and 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday would be classified as “negative” while about 4% would be considered “positive” (about 89% were considered “neutral”).

On the day of the company’s annual general meeting, tweets about RIM were dominated by Canadians, with 45% of total Twitter mentions originating from within RIM’s home country, which shouldn’t be surprising, considering the investor and media interest surrounding the company in this country.

In Canada, negative Tweets were tracked at 8% and positive at a small 2%, for a ratio of 4:1.

In the key United States market , which generated about 25% of total RIM-related tweets on Tuesday, negative mentions climbed to 17% while only 3% were positive.

In the United Kingdom – which accounted for 5% of overall mentions – negative mentions stood at 8 per cent, but positive mentions were in short supply.

“The data shows that Canadians still show more positive sentiment towards RIM than the rest of the world,” said Infomart product manager Camilo Gonzalez.

The Blackberry maker has stressed it has dramatically increased its presence in international markets and this was reflected in the locations of worldwide coverage online.

South Africa represented 2% of total mentions, equally split between positive and negative sentiment at 5% each. Indonesia saw a decline in negative sentiment, but very little in the way of positive sentiment, accounting for about 5% of total discussion. Negative sentiment also dominated responses from India with a ratio of 5:1 for negative to positive Tweets.

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At 85% of Canada’s total, an overwhelming percentage of tweets about the AGM originated from Ontario, where negative sentiment was only slightly higher than positive mentions. This concentration of response is likely due to the location of RIM’s headquarters in Waterloo, responses from Bay Street and the presence of many journalists at the AGM.

WATERLOO — Among shareholders who took to the microphone to question Research In Motion Ltd. ’s senior leaders at the BlackBerry maker’s annual meeting on Tuesday was a middle-aged gentleman who cordially wished new chief executive Thorsten Heins the best of luck in his quest to turn the struggling technology company around.

But he also remained “extraordinarily critical” of the company’s board of directors, he said, wondering how they could let things at RIM get so bad — drawing applause from the several hundred investors gathered in an auditorium on the campus of Wilfrid Laurier University.

The man’s restrained frustration was representative of the overarching sentiment at the RIM meeting, where investors appeared to be torn between feelings of bitterness toward the board and their cautious desire to believe Mr. Heins’ promises of a rebirth. In a reflection of their quiet disapproval, RIM’s shares fell 4.6% to $7.44 Tuesday on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

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A pioneer in the smartphone market, RIM’s devices have fallen out of favour with customers in North America, many of whom have turned away from BlackBerrys in favour of Apple Inc.’s iPhone and devices running Google Inc.’s Android software. As a result, shares of RIM have lost nearly 90% of their value over the past 18 months amid slowing sales, product delays and the disappointing launch of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

RIM’s continuing woes led to the ouster of co-chief executives Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie and the appointment of Mr. Heins earlier this year. The shakeup also resulted in Barbara Stymiest being named as the new chairwoman of the board of directors.

Despite the public boosterism of its new leadership, RIM remains mired in the long-delayed transition to a new software platform for its BlackBerry devices — known as BlackBerry 10 — which has frustrated many investors.

On Tuesday, Ms. Stymiest did her best to assure shareholders that the company’s board of directors remains “very supportive” of Mr. Heins and the executive team he has put in place over the past six months.

“We believe the company’s executive team is well positioned to lead the company forward to face its current challenges and pursue the opportunities that lie ahead,” she said during the meeting.

All 10 of the board members RIM put forth for election were confirmed at the meeting, including two new directors: Fairfax Financial Holdings chief executive Prem Watsa (who was appointed in January), and former Goldman Sachs executive Timothy Dattels.

However, investors withheld between 15% and 30% of their votes, which some, including Jaguar Financial chief executive Vic Alboini, suggested was an indication that shareholders were less than satisfied with the company’s nominees.

“In the absence of an alternative slate, that’s a vote against directors joining the board,” Mr. Alboini told reporters after the meeting. “I hope that the board looks very seriously at that message that’s being communicated by the shareholders.”

During the meeting, Mr. Alboini asked Ms. Stymiest if the board planned to look for new members with technology experience or Silicon Valley connections. Another shareholder asked if RIM was considering adding executives from various international markets to augment the existing members of the board.

In a later statement, Ms. Stymiest also made it clear that the board has indeed “heard shareholders loud and clear.”

“No-one is more committed than we are to demonstrating that RIM has a lot of fight in it. We are well positioned to be a meaningful global player and innovation leader in mobile computing. In just the past year, the Board has added four new directors. Additionally, as I said at the AGM, the board is always considering potential new directors and that process continues.”

Ms. Stymiest said RIM had hired an external search firm to help the company attract new directors, but told Mr. Alboini that the qualities he was seeking were already well represented among RIM’s current crop of directors.

Outside, Mr. Alboini suggested that despite RIM’s insistence that a turnaround remains possible once the first BlackBerry 10 devices launch early next year, the best way to unlock the shareholder value of RIM would be to break up the company.

“[The board] has to look at a break-up for the company into the handset business and the software and services platform, and a potential sale of either or both or private placement funding investments by giant competitors like Microsoft, IBM, Facebook and others,” he said.

“That will save this company. Their whole focus continues to be on licensing the BB10 platform, joint ventures and partnerships. And again, you can’t put all your eggs in one basket. You have to be open to other alternatives. So, it was a highly disappointing presentation, and frankly it looks like a sad company right now that needs a major fix.”

Mr. Heins appeared to understand the shareholder frustration.

“I can assure you we do not take this support lightly or as unconditional,” he said.

While he highlighted RIM’s success in international markets, he conceded that its business was hurt by weaker than expected performance in the United Kingdom, United States and Canada. Mr. Heins attributed RIM’s revenue drop in those markets to “competitive dynamics” without mentioning Apple Inc.’s iPhone or Google’s Android.

In order to address the company’s flagging performance and cut costs, he said RIM planned to shrink its external manufacturing sites to three from 10, while streamlining the BlackBerry product portfolio and selling fewer device models.

“I am not satisfied with the performance of the company over the past year.”

Although the company’s shares plummeted last month after RIM announced it would be laying off 5,000 employees and again delay the launch of BB10 until the first quarter of 2013 — the company had initially said it would launch later this year — Mr. Heins said he would not rush an unfinished product out the door.

“I will not deliver a platform to market that is not ready to meet the needs of our customers,” Mr. Heins said. “There will be no compromise.”

“The market didn’t really feel encouraged by the responses,” said Mike Abramsky, principal at strategic advisory firm Red Team Global.

“It just shows the market continues to feel uncomfortable with the current strategy and the direction that the board and management are taking the company right now,” he said.

He noted there is a gap between comments RIM is making about being in a turnaround as opposed to a crisis, however, he added that the company’s hands are likely tied in terms of what it can disclose from both a public relations and legal perspective.

With files from the Financial Post’s Christine Dobby and The Canadian Press

TORONTO — Research In Motion Ltd.’s hopes of restoring the beleaguered BlackBerry brand to its former glory rest squarely on the shoulders of Frank Boulben.

A wireless marketing veteran who has worked for many of Europe’s largest telecom carriers, Mr. Boulben was no stranger to RIM’s past marketing efforts when he left U.S. wireless broadband network company LightSquared and took over as chief marketing officer of the struggling BlackBerry maker in May.

But now, after taking a long hard look at how RIM treats its brand and promotes its products and services around the world, Mr. Boulben believes the only way the Waterloo, Ont.-based company will regain its marketing mojo will be to unify the message it is delivering to consumers on a global scale.

In other words, RIM needs to teach the BlackBerry brand to speak with one voice around the world.

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“We have a lot of marketing talent inside, but we are not operating with a unified approach, so there is a lot of fragmentation, a lot of duplication and a lack of consistency,” Mr. Boulben said in an interview with the Financial Post .

“BB10 is the perfect opportunity to do marketing at RIM in a unified manner across geographies, countries and regions. This unified approach will allow us to leverage our scale and scope, to leverage the best practices and to leverage relationships with partners, agencies and media owners.”

On Tuesday, RIM will hold its annual general meeting for shareholders in Waterloo at a time when the company is struggling to convince investors that a turnaround is still possible and that it is not caught in a “death spiral.”

Once the leading provider of smartphones in the United States and a growing corporate power on the international stage, RIM has fallen out of favour with customers in North America, who have turned away from BlackBerrys in favour of Apple Inc.’s iPhone and devices running Google Inc.’s Android software.
As a result, sales have slowed and shares of RIM have lost nearly 90% of their value since the beginning of 2011, following a series of product delays, the disappointing launch of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and a steady stream of marketing and technical gaffes.

RIM’s shares nosedived further last month when the company announced it would be laying off 5,000 employees and that the company’s next generation of BlackBerry smartphones running the BlackBerry 10 operating system — the linchpin of the company’s hopes for a turnaround — would not be launching this fall as promised, but would instead be delayed until early next year.

When new chief executive Thorsten Heins, took the reins at RIM in January, he said filling the company’s vacant chief marketing officer post would be key to a U.S. turnaround for the BlackBerry maker.

Mr. Boulben believes that such a turnaround remains within reach, and that BlackBerry 10, when it launches in early 2013, will offer the company the chance to unify its marketing message and put a fresh face on BlackBerry.

“We’ll use BB10 as the great unified marketing approach,” Mr. Boulben said. “It’s easier to do that unification via a new product and a new marketing plan than it is to change things that are ongoing for BlackBerry 7.”

Over the past several years, RIM has faced frequent criticism for its marketing missteps.

RIM’s PlayBook marketing campaign fell flat after it focused on the tablet’s use of Adobe Flash technology, something Apple’s popular iPad lacked, but a feature that failed to resonate with many consumers.

RIM’s Australian division generated negative online attention for a recent campaign that featured mock protesters encouraging Apple fans to “Wake Up,” while closer to home, experts wondered why RIM was running ads with customers extolling the virtues of a physical keyboard at the same time the company had revealed its first BlackBerry 10 device will be touchscreen-only.

Part of the reason for the fractured marketing message was a lack of internal marketing leadership, Mr. Boulben said. Before Mr. Boulben was hired to the chief marketer post in May, RIM had been without a CMO since March 2011, when Keith Pardy stepped down.

“Marketing was largely decentralized at country level, and that does not allow us to fully leverage the scale and scope of the business,” Mr. Boulben said. “What’s reassuring for me is that I don’t think we have a talent issue in marketing, we have more of an operating model issue. That’s much easier to fix.”

Mr. Boulben said he plans to take the best marketing approaches from RIM’s various international teams and use that knowledge to improve the company’s overall messaging.

“We are currently doing a review of how we do marketing everywhere and when we develop a unified plan for BB10, we will take the best input and insight from all over the world to design that plan,” he said.
“In my core team, working on the BB10 team, a number of key participants are from Europe and the Middle East region, and they are leading key workstreams in the BB10 program.”

If RIM’s marketing efforts are to be successful, the company will need its fans to show their love of BlackBerry, Mr. Boulben said. RIM will need to ensure it ships a quality product with BlackBerry 10 and then hope that the same community of dedicated users who gave rise to the term “Crackberry” will spread the word about RIM’s latest creation.

“When you have a differentiated product in the smartphone market, the best way to market it is word of mouth,” he said.

“As you know, word of mouth goes very quickly these days thanks to social networking… I think the initial spark has to come from the BB10 user experience in the hands of our fans and loyal customers. If we get them excited, it will grow to become something bigger and we will accompany it with the right marketing approaches.”

While many investors have already written off RIM’s chances of a turnaround and believe the quickest way to unlock the company’s value would be to sell it off — either in whole or in pieces — Mr. Boulben remains convinced that RIM is about to usher in a new dawn for the company with BlackBerry 10.

“We have a unique opportunity,” Mr. Boulben said.

“So we need to make sure we have an effective advocacy approach so that we have the device in the right hands before we go full-blown from a commercial point of view so that we have that grassroots, positive momentum that we can amplify through marketing.

“Nailing that is my most critical task.”

Research In Motion Ltd. ’s campaign to convince investors and consumers that a turnaround at the struggling BlackBerry maker is still possible will no doubt continue at its annual shareholder meeting in hometown Waterloo, Ont., on Tuesday.

The meeting follows a week that saw chief executive Thorsten Heins and other executives embark upon a media offensive to plug the company’s health and prospects.

Mr. Heins asserted RIM is far from being “in a death spiral” and is actually in good shape, with a healthy cash balance, no debt and a product launch set for next year. But he and his team have a lot to explain to investors after reporting a near US$200-million operating loss and another delay to the crucial launch of new smartphones running the new BlackBerry 10 operating system.

He also confirmed that RIM will cut 5,000 employees from its global workforce of 16,500 — on top of 2,000 cut last summer — as it looks to trim $1-billion in costs.

RIM does not reveal exactly where its workers are located nor where the cuts will fall but it has said the “majority” of its workforce is in Waterloo, meaning they will affect many in the community of about 100,000 (the larger Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo region has a population of 477,000, according to the 2011 census).

If there’s a silver lining to the layoffs, it’s the enrichment of the area’s tech talent pool.

For those running technology companies in the area, employees have been hard to come by, but that is changing as job seekers look beyond a shrinking RIM.

According to Iain Klugman, president and chief executive of Waterloo-based startup accelerator Communitech, there are roughly 450 startups in the region, almost all looking to hire. His own estimates, which he describes as “conservative,” place the number of job openings at roughly 1,200 among the city’s startups.

“People realize that RIM is in a real battle right now, but they also recognize the fact that they have a huge customer install base, a global organization, cash in the bank, they know how to do what they do,” Mr. Klugman said.

“While none of us know what’s going to happen, there’s still very much a confidence that RIM is going to make this work … and I get the sense that there’s a belief that RIM will emerge from this as a significantly different company than they were in the past, and that’s probably going to be okay.”

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Indeed, some companies are beginning to take their hiring efforts to the next level. In April, the Waterloo Region Record reported that Miovision Technologies rewarded employees with a $3,000 bonus if they referred a software engineer who was hired by the company.

“It’s always hard to see the silver lining in terms of what’s happening with RIM, but what a lot of people don’t realize is, depending on which source you get it from, there’s anywhere from 500 to almost 1,000 small businesses/startups in the region,” said Adam Belsher, chief executive of Waterloo-based JADSoftware Inc.

For 13 years, Mr. Belsher worked at RIM in various roles, including as vice-president of the Verizon business unit, before setting out on his own last fall. His new company, which has a product that automates the recovery of digital evidence from computers, has been steadily hiring and is now up to 16 workers, 40% of whom are former RIM employees.

“It was hard to compete when RIM was really the rock star, because their compensation is good, their benefits are good, they’ve got a lot of perks,” Mr. Belsher said. “Most of the people I talk to are not happy with what’s happening with RIM, but they feel that they can now get some of that talent they otherwise couldn’t.”

In a survey of 150 chief executives of emerging technology companies in Canada published in May, PwC reported that one-quarter of respondents saw managing talent and attracting staff as their biggest pain point in 2011.

At a conference to present the survey, PwC partner Peter Matutat said the majority of those polled reported that finding qualified programmers has gotten more difficult over the past two years. He specifically pointed to RIM, which dramatically expanded its workforce in the half decade prior to the cuts, as a source of competition on the demand side.

As the layoffs continue throughout the year and RIM employees look for new work, attracting talent in the area might become a bit easier.

Blair Currie is manager of marketing at Intelligent Mechatronic Systems Inc., a Waterloo company that designs tech solutions for traffic monitoring and other automotive-related applications. Over the past year, the 13-year-old company has added about 10 new workers to its now-85-person staff and at least four of the new hires were former RIM employees.

“We’re hiring RIM people and we’re not the only hiring company here. We have 20 openings,” he said. “The good news is Waterloo is kind of an engine for jobs. We may lose a few thousand people in Waterloo [from RIM] but the ability to absorb that is a lot better than it used to be. There’s lots of room for good people because there’s a lot of innovation here.”

Olga Pawluczyk, president of P&P Optica Inc. said she set up her business in the Kitchener-Waterloo area because of the talent pool and proximity to accelerators, Communitech and universities. One of her flagship products, a spectrometer that performs hyperspectral imaging, was named one of R&D Magazine’s top 100 technologies of 2012 and she plans to hire five to 10 new workers on top of the company’s current 19.

“RIM helped to create this fabulous ecosystem over the last 15 year and now the ecosystem is growing many new and exciting companies that have nothing to do with RIM,” she said.

Research In Motion shareholders re-elected all 10 directors of its board at its annual general meeting on Tuesday, as the BlackBerry maker’s management was grilled on its dismal performance.

FP Tech Desk’s Matt Hartley reported live from the company’s headquarters in Waterloo, Ont. during the AGM.

****

Update 11:23 a.m.: Mr. Heins says RIM is still a leader in enterprise devices: “It’s our heritage.” But he also says the company has changed the way it approaches the consumer market.

Update 11:03 a.m.: Mr. Heins says RIM plans to support fewer BlackBerry models and he believes a slimmed-down product portfolio will cut R&D costs.

Update 10:54 a.m.: Mr. Heins: RIM plans to reduce levels of management complexity across the organization in a bid to bring aout cultural change. The company is also outsourcing global repair operations and realigning sales, marketing and quality organizations.

Update 10:51 a.m.: Mr. Heins says RIM has handed out 6,000 BlackBerry Dev Alpha devices to developers that can be used to build BB10 apps.

Update 10:41 a.m.: RIM CEO Thorsten Heins: “The past year has been very difficult to RIM as we make the change to this platform we call BlackBerry 10.”

Update 10:32 a.m.: All 10 RIM directors confirmed.

Update 10:17 a.m.: Voting on RIM’s board begins — up for confirmation are Fairfax Financial CEO Prem Watsa and former Goldman Sachs executive Tim Dattels.

Update 10:15 a.m.: Prominent shareholder Vic Alboini of Jaguar Financial asks if RIM has hired a search firm to find new board members. Ms. Sytmiest says the company has.

Update 10:06 a.m.: RIM Chairwoman Barbara Stymiest reminds everyone the next couple of quarters are going to be challenging. “With challenges come opportunities.”

Click here to access the coverage from a mobile device
[npscribble id=52235]

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TORONTO — Roughly one year ago, Research In Motion Ltd. co-chief executives Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie stood up at the company’s annual general meeting and told investors that the company wouldn’t be ready to transition its BlackBerry devices to a much-anticipated new platform until at least 2012.

Twelve months later, Messrs. Balsillie and Lazaridis are no longer in charge at RIM, and the first devices to run on BlackBerry 10 are still more than half a year from landing on store shelves.

Now, new chief executive Thorsten Heins will need to convince investors at this year’s AGM — coming July 10 — to have patience and believe a turnaround is still possible in Waterloo.

But after losing another 20% of its share value on Friday in the wake of the company’s shockingly deep first-quarter loss, RIM now heads toward its annual shareholders’ meeting bearing the knowledge that many of those owners believe the company is more valuable dead than alive.

As RIM’s losses deepened throughout 2011, rumours began to swirl that at least some of the company’s rivals were examining the possibility of a takeover.

Some analysts started to wonder if the company might be worth more if it was carved up and sold off, piece by piece.

Those rumours have only accelerated this year as RIM’s share price continued to fall and analysts began to speculate its executives could be considering splitting the company up for a possible sale.

Some analysts now believe the company’s market value is far lower than the sum of its parts. RIM’s market capitalization as of Friday afternoon was roughly US$3.85-billion, but the company still has US$2.2-billion of cash on its books, which means its enterprise value, the real value the market assigns to the company’s operations and hard assets, is just US$1.65-billion.

Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley says RIM’s patents alone could be worth US$2.25-billion (this figure is discounted by about US$780-million for the company’s share of the Nortel patent consortium, which he views as potentially difficult to sell).

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He assigns zero value to its struggling hardware business but pegs its enterprise subscriber business and network operating centre architecture at US$2-billion, bringing the enterprise value of the company to US$4.25-billion. And that’s if there were a fire sale.

In a May 29 update during which he forecast the quarterly loss and job cuts, Mr. Heins said RIM had hired top investment banks JPMorgan and RBC Capital Markets to advise on “strategic alternatives.”

Mr. Heins has maintained these alternatives could possibly mean licensing RIM’s technology to competitors, selling the company whole or in parts, or splitting up its patent holdings and its hardware and services businesses.

When asked by an investor on Thursday if he was considering a possible breakup or sale of the company, Mr. Heins said only that all options remain on the table.

On Thursday, RIM reported dismal first-quarter earnings that fell short of already lowered Wall Street expectations, causing shares to nose-dive after hours to levels not seen since 2003.

The company’s stock shed about one-fifth of its value on Friday alone, dropping $1.92 to close at $7.54 a share on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

In addition to announcing an adjusted net loss of US$192-million, Mr. Heins also revealed RIM would be slashing 5,000 jobs — roughly 30% of its global workforce — as part of a plan to save as much as US$1-billion in costs.

Making matters worse, Mr. Heins also revealed the first BlackBerry smartphones to be powered by RIM’s long-awaited BlackBerry 10 operating system software would be delayed until the first quarter of next year.

Peter Misek, an equity analyst at Jefferies and Co., said the most important takeaway from the earnings announcement was the delay, which RIM simply cannot afford.

“We think execution risks will continue as RIM plans to lay off 5,000 of its 16,500 employees by February while at the same time launching its most pivotal product in the company’s history.”

The news came as a devastating blow to RIM and the confidence of its investors. RIM’s former leadership — former co-chief executives Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie — initially forecast BlackBerry 10 would be ready for early 2012, but a problem with the microchips caused RIM to delay the launch until the latter half of 2012.

By pushing the launch of its new BlackBerry devices into next year, missing the back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons, RIM is at risk of falling further behind rivals Apple Inc. and Google Inc.

RIM’s aging BlackBerry lineup is suffering from dismal North American sales against Apple’s iPhone — with Apple expected to launch a new version later this year — while new devices from Android continue to chip away at RIM’s position in the marketplace.

With the announcement of this most recent delay, some analysts are beginning to wonder if BB10 will be enough to pull RIM out of its current tailspin, while others are beginning to question RIM’s ability to avoid a selloff of its assets or an outright takeover before the first new BlackBerrys arrive in stores next year.

“We do not believe BB10 devices will turn around its struggling business,” said Canaccord Genuity’s Michael Walkley.

The analyst community does not doubt the power of the operating system, said Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, but BB10’s capabilities alone are not enough to right the ship.

Colin Gillis, an equity analyst with BGC Partners in New York, said he was not surprised by the further delay in the BB10 launch.

“But one of the other things is I don’t view BB10 as any type of saviour,” he said. “I don’t expect it to get much adoption. Even when it’s ready, it’s going to be another slab of glass.”

Mr. Gillis wonders why RIM — which has said the first BB10 phone will feature a touchscreen-only design while a QWERTY keyboard will come later — was not playing to its core strengths of enterprise and productivity. “It can be thin, it can be sleek and it can have apps and it doesn’t mean it’s going to sell.”

It’s unclear exactly who might buy the company at this time. “Anyone who wanted to acquire them has probably given them a good sniff,” Mr. Gillis said.

TORONTO — With shares of Research In Motion Ltd. taking a pounding on capital markets on Friday, investors are wondering aloud if the embattled BlackBerry maker’s white knight operating system will arrive in time to save the Waterloo, Ont. technology giant.

On Thursday, RIM reported dismal first quarter earnings that fell short of already lowered Wall Street expectations causing shares to nosedive after hours to levels not seen since 2003.

The company’s stock shed about one fifth of its value on Friday alone, dropping $1.92, or 20.3%, to close at $7.54 a share on the Toronto Stock Exchange and slipping US$1.74, or 19%, to a final price of US$7.39 on the Nasdaq.

In addition to announcing an adjusted net loss of US$192-million, RIM chief executive Thorsten Heins also revealed the company would be slashing 5,000 jobs — roughly 30% of the company’s global workforce — as part of a plan to save as much as US$1-billion in costs.

Making matters worse, Mr. Heins also revealed that the first BlackBerry smartphones to be powered by RIM’s long awaited BlackBerry 10 operating system software would be delayed until the first quarter of next year.

Peter Misek, an equity analyst at Jefferies and Company, said the most important takeaway from the earnings announcement was the delay, which the company simply cannot afford.

“We think execution risks will continue as RIM plans to lay off 5,000 of its 16,500 employees by February while at the same time launching its most pivotal product in the company’s history.”

The news came as a devastating blow to RIM and the confidence of the company’s investors. RIM’s former leadership — former co-chief executives Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie — initially forecast that BlackBerry 10 would be ready for early 2012, however, a problem with the microchips being used in the new BlackBerry devices caused RIM to delay the launch until the latter half of 2012.

By pushing the launch of its new BlackBerry devices into next year, missing the back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons, RIM is at risk of falling further behind rivals Apple Inc. and Google Inc.

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RIM’s aging BlackBerry lineup is suffering from sluggish sales against Apple’s iPhone — with Apple expected to launch a new version of the device later this year — while new devices from Android continue to chip away at RIM’s position in the marketplace.

With the announcement of this most recent delay, some analysts are beginning to wonder if BB10 will be enough to pull RIM out of its current tailspin, while others are beginning to question RIM’s ability to avoid a fire sale of its assets or an outright takeover before the first new BlackBerrys arrive in stores next year.

“We do not believe BB10 devices will turn around its struggling business,” said Canaccord Genuity’s Michael Walkley.

“With increased global smartphone competition and a very low probability the market will support RIM’s new BB10 mobile computing ecosystem, we believe RIM will ultimately need to sell the company or dramatically change its business model.”

The analyst community does not doubt the power of the operating system, said Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media, but BB10’s capabilities alone are not enough to right the company’s ship.

“Bear in mind that 100% of the 78 million current BlackBerry users are still using legacy devices, so upgrading all these users to BB10 will not happen overnight and RIM might well lose a great number of these users in the process,” he said, adding that the delay until next year only makes matters worse.

Colin Gillis, an equity analyst with BGC Partners in New York, said he was not surprised by the further delay in the BB10 launch.

“But one of the other things is I don’t view BB10 as any type of saviour,” he said. “I don’t expect it to get much adoption. Even when it’s ready, it’s going to be another slab of glass.”

Mr. Gillis wonders why RIM — which has said the first BB10 phone will feature a touchscreen-only design while devices featuring a QWERTY keyboard will come later — was not playing to its core strengths of enterprise and productivity.

“It can be thin, it can be sleek and it can have apps and it doesn’t mean it’s going to sell.”

Given the grim outlook for its BB10 platform, many are looking for the company to pursue a sale, with most analysts evaluating RIM on a sum-of-the parts basis. It has hired investment banks JP Morgan and RBC Capital Markets to advise it on strategic options, and Mr. Heins did not rule out a sale during Thursday’s conference call.

But it’s unclear exactly who might buy the company at this time.

“We continue to believe that RIM is unlikely to be acquired before BB10 launches,” Mr. Misek said.

“Anyone who wanted to acquire them has probably given them a good sniff,” Mr. Gillis said.