RIM is in deep, deep doo-doo. The Canadian technology company has been taking a pounding from Apple and Google over the last few years. They’ve lost a $147 million patent dispute, admitted that they’ll be licensing their software just to stay alive, and posted a miserable first fiscal quarter back in June.
By any yardstick, the company is struggling to survive. So it could really use some good news, in the form of hearing that their close friends the cellular phone providers of America are pushing their products. After all, RIM’s disastrous few quarters have largely been due to contracting market share in America, so carrier support is absolutely crucial.
Yeah… about that.
In a show of faith that’s not exactly surprising in light of recent events, mobile phone providers aren’t selling BlackBerry.
“Our sell-through checks in the United States indicate that BlackBerry sales were largely unchanged in August versus July; however, we detected meaningfully lower inventory levels versus a month ago,” [stock analyst James] Faucette explains. “In terms of sell-through, we believe that current run rates are roughly one-fifth of those we saw in the United States just eight months ago. Further, we found a meaningful number of carrier retail locations which had not sold a single BlackBerry in over a month.”
Basically, most retail outlets for carriers aren’t selling BlackBerry devices, and a fair chunk of them have fewer and fewer BlackBerry products to sell in the first place. So, if you were hanging onto any BlackBerry stock, now might be a good time to sell.