Rumours of RIM's demise are coming out faster than speeding bullets. I decided to do a bit of unofficial market research last week, to see if the BB is only strong in emerging economies, and if Android and Apple have taken over in Toronto. Notice, I said unofficial survey.

I was on a delightful Harbour Cruise last week, as a guest of the US Consulate as they celebrated US Independence Day. The weather was perfect, there were about 400 people on board, and I walked around, looking at the devices that people were using. Every single person on board who pulled out a mobile device in my sight was using a Blackberry. 100%. No android phones. No Apple phones. All Blackberries. So, I started talking with people about their phones, and why they were using Blackberries. Many, many attendees like the functionality, security, and keyboard. They like the easy synching with Outlook. Others told me that it was corporate policy, and they were fine with that.

I then started looking at the devices that fellow hockey parents were using, when I went to my son's practice. Interesting breakdown there - the business people had blackberries, and some non-working parents had blackberries, while some other non-working parents had other devices (primarily iphones for the other devices).

I expect rumours of RIM's demise are slightly exaggerated, at least for now.

I hope they can pull things back together, and rise even stronger than before.

Cheryl

Something's definitely going on with RIM ... I was at a networking event a week or so ago and met an entire group of assorted former RIM employees ... all packaged out within the last few weeks and freshly unemployed. Lets just say it was a fascinating conversation over a few cold beers.

I had an interesting discussion on Friday with a leading IT visionary in Ontario. We got to talking about RIM, and he made an interesting observation - he said that in any other country, a company with the statistics that RIM has (market share, distribution reach, product quality, partnerships, cash in the bank + annuity stream) would be lauded as a success. He feels the financial industry in Canada started talking badly about RIM, and downgrading the stock, with led the Canadian media to start talking it down, and spreading the word far and wide, in a negative sense, as negative sells print better than positive.

Interesting analysis, and could help to explain why RIM is doing so poorly, when really, they have a terrific user base, distribution channel and annuity revenue stream.

Cheryl