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Somebody call the brand police, there’s a mugging going on.
BlackBerry, once the messenger of the elite and status of power, is the victim of such a marketplace beating that fewer than one in five Wall Street analysts following the stock of its maker, Research in Motion, have a “buy” rating on the shares.
This, despite the fact that RIM shares lost 13.3 percent of their value over the past five trading sessions — each day hitting a new 52-week low — as they stumbled to a close at $16 yesterday.
The company was expected to slow and reverse its long decline this holiday season thanks to its new BlackBerry 7 series. But as shoppers start to gobble up holiday goodies, recently released BlackBerry Bold 9900s and other smart phones appear to be getting overlooked.
“Our recent checks indicate slowing sell-through trends for the new BlackBerry 7 smartphones the past couple weeks,” Canaccord Genuity analyst Mike Walkley wrote in a report this week.
Walkley blamed the slow demand on the iPhone 4S, which is a must-buy for many gadget geeks.
Indeed, both Apple’s iOS, which powers the iPhone, and Google’s Android operating system, have leaped ahead of BlackBerry in worldwide market share this year.
Just two years ago, RIM had a double-digit market share lead over its two mighty rivals.
RIM is in the middle of a technology transition that it hopes will reverse its market-share losses.
In the first half of next year, RIM is expected to introduce the first phones based on its BBX operating system that melds BlackBerry’s infrastructure with the QNX technology the company acquired last year and used to build its PlayBook tablet.
People who have seen early versions of BBX phones say the technology advances the brand and is sure to please BlackBerry enthusiasts. Analysts say the product upgrade comes too late, and RIM has already been plagued by delays.
Until the BBX phone arrives, the BlackBerry 7 phones appear to be underwhelming.
To be sure, many hardcore BlackBerry users are still clinging to their devices, sometimes just not as openly. The company has a clandestine program that tries to keep the brand faithful within the family.
A person with knowledge of the initiative who spoke on the condition of anonymity said it is called the Essentialist Program, and it is used to educate the “influencers” in circles from Hollywood to Wall Street on RIM products, and they help build a following.
People such as super-agent Ari Emanuel and producer Jeffrey Katzenberg are among the BlackBerry evangelists.
However, some of the BlackBerry’s core customers were jolted when there was a RIM outage last month, putting a dent in its image as always reliable for messenging.
There are signs that RIM’s corporate grip is loosening and it does not have the same consumer cachet as Apple and Android phones.
The developers who build the apps that entice users are not yet flocking to RIM, in fact they appear to be running away. The number of developer interested in building BlackBerry product was down 7 points to just 21 percent, in the latest industry poll.