For a major phone company, RIM’s silence is deafening.
Amid Samsung selling 20 million Galaxy III smartphones, Amazon’s high-def Kindle launch and the upcoming biennial iPhoneapalooza, RIM remained mute last week, which could put the company behind the eight ball for the next two years as users sign contracts for the newest iPhone or Android smartphone.
The Canadian smartphone maker has not had a lot to celebrate this year, as the stock is down more than 50 percent and closed Friday at $7.19.
It’s a continuation of a theme for RIM shareholders, whose stock has lost more than 77 percent of its value over the last year.
Compare that with Apple’s 77 percent rise, and you see the rotation within the sector.
RIM announced its next-generation smartphone last month, but the models will not be available until the second quarter of 2013.
The one bright spot that has appeared in RIM’s stock recently was the 4 percent bump that the shares received when Apple won its $1 billion patent case against Samsung.
Many analysts seem to suggest that RIM’s technology is proprietary and would not run afoul of the smartphone platform’s patents, so it could be ripe for a takeover.
And RIM still has a loyal customer its competitors don’t: Uncle Sam.
With a million customers at the state, local and federal level, civil servants across the country are clicking away on their tactile keyboards with abandon.
The relationship between the company and the federal government is almost as old as the smartphone industry itself, and it’s especially strong within one Cabinet department, according to Scott Totzke, a senior vice president at RIM.
“I’m comfortable saying that the Department of Defense is our largest government customer,” said Totzke.
The relationship between RIM and the DOD began just after 9/11, when the Pentagon approached the company about helping it create a secure smartphone and data-backup system.
But how long can Uncle Sam carry RIM’s water?
According to the General Services Administration, each government agency is able to choose its own phones and servicers, depending on what the agency needs.
In the case of the GSA itself, workers can use iPhones, Androids and BlackBerrys.
Still, for some federal government employees who don’t have that range of options, lugging around a BlackBerry and their own smartphone can be cumbersome.
Workers griped to the Washington Post in April about their BlackBerrys, with one wanting “a bigger screen. . . . It’d be nice to surf the Web more easily.”
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