NEW YORK (TheStreet) --
Research In Motion(
RIMM) will report its latest quarter after the close on Thursday.
As Horace Dediu pointed out on his Asymco blog, last yea, RIM reported that it sold 13.2 million phones. Yet, in the prior quarter reported in April, RIM only reported selling 11.1 million phones.
The market is clearly anxious about what RIM will report and the death-spiral trajectory it's on. Earlier Wednesday, RIM touched $8.83. That's a level RIM hasn't seen since December 2003, or 8.5 years ago.
RIM is down 68% in the last year and 84% in the last five years. Since June 20, 2008, RIM is down 93%, or $124.
RIM has tried to right the ship in the last six months by:
Forcing out co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie Reformulating its board, including adding new investor Prem Watsa of Fairfax Financial Holdings Appointing Thorsten Heins as CEO and forcing out a number of other senior executives Cutting forward guidance Announcing job cuts and write-downs Hiring bankers to gin up some value-creating steps Sending frantic smoke signals out to whoever will listen that it's open to any and every "strategic" offer that comes its ways Stepped on the gas in terms of pushing internally to do whatever it can to get BlackBerry 10 phones out the door as fast as it can So, what can Thorsten Heins or the RIM board do to turn things around? The steps taken to date have obviously not appeased investors.
Six months ago, it looked like the biggest strengths for RIM were:
Its nearly 80+ million subscribers Strength in the enterprise and government The BB10 operating system being respected as being scalable and user-friendly A number of BB10 OS deployments (as its precursor company QNX) in cars as a possible future revenue path for RIM A strong balance sheet and a company that was still very profitable A strong patent portfolio A deployed messaging infrastructure of NOCs that let RIM offer cheap BlackBerry instant messaging to its subscribers