Friday, March 03, 2006

BlackBerry Signs Peace Accord


What can better than a half billion dollars buy you these days? Well if you make it $612.5 million dollars it can buy you peace (piece of mind) and settlement of a damaging PR nightmare.

RIM's failure to settle last March cost an additional $162 million dollars. Not a bad return on investment for 12 months for NTP. RIM was losing business, both large and small customers were leaving the service and potential new customers were holding their ground until a resolution was assured.

RIM is out a few bucks... but hey, they have a billion dollars in cash in the bank so they'll be okay. Sales will be picking up quick and their stock was up 14% today in after market trading. That's a big day.

Who else won today beside corporate and individual clients? All 435 members of US House of Representatives and 100 US Senators and their staffs. If the service was shut off these folks had a "free pass" which would have kept their service up and running. Sound good?

Not really. They would have been vilified in the press and rightly so - the world suffers and yet the US Congress gets a free pass? That wouldn't have gone over so good, and the argument that the BlackBerry was vital to the operation of our government is a bunch of bull. There was always the Treo...

Treo (PALM), is perhaps the only loser today. Their stock is down almost 4% in after market trading and the possibility of picking up BlackBerry clients will most likely subside.

Well it's all over now... in a week this will no longer be a story. The good news for everyone is that BlackBerry will hopefully continue to make their product smaller and add a few more key features such as voice activated dialing. Soon the 8700c will spread to other carriers and BlackBerry will have an even stronger position in the market.

Peace - Out.

TK

No comments: