Shock because even RIM acknowledges that the new phones are vital to reversing its rapid loss of market share in North America. At the same time, analysts were skeptical about the company’s explanation that the delay stemmed from its decision to wait for a new, improved microprocessor.
Instead, many analysts say that both the new phones and RIM’s new operating system, BlackBerry 10, may have significant performance problems and are delaying the project.
“They can’t get the infrastructure and the operating system ready in time,” said Peter Misek, an analyst with Jefferies Company. Alkesh Shah, an analyst at Evercore Partners, agreed. “Waiting for the chipset is a contributing factor in a number of factors that led to the delay,” he said. “Creating the ecosystem for the phones is the bigger problem.”
Mr. Shah and several other analysts said that delays in the development of BlackBerry 10 and poor battery performance in prototype versions of the new phones were behind the decision to further delay production until faster, smaller and more power-efficient chips became available in late 2012. Those delays made it impossible for RIM to begin selling the new phones early in 2012, as it first promised.
“One of the problems is the delay in the BB 10 software and that may have led to the selection of chips that caused the most recent delay,” said Rod Hall, an analyst with JPMorgan Chase.
While the analysts’ skepticism is partly based on speculation, it has also been fueled by RIM’s general loss of credibility with them. For more than a year, the company has been forced to repeatedly restate financial forecasts and failed to deliver some critical, new products on time.
“They don’t have a firm grasp of the issues and realities of bringing these phones to market,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst with BGC Partners. “There are not many believers right now,”
RIM has declined to identify the new chip. RIM also declined to comment directly about development problems with BlackBerry 10 or the battery life of the new phones.
It reiterated the earlier remarks of its co-chief executives, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, that the delay was simply the result of its decision to wait for an improved chipset. “RIM made a strategic decision to launch BlackBerry 10 devices with a new, LTE-based dual core chipset architecture,” the company said, referring to a chip that supports a high-speed wireless service known as LTE that is now available in some parts of the United States. “As explained on our earnings call, the broad engineering impact of this decision and certain other factors significantly influenced the anticipated timing for the BlackBerry 10 devices.”
But it is no secret that RIM has been struggling with its new operating system, which is based on technology from QNX Software Systems, a company based in Ottawa that RIM acquired in 2010. The BlackBerry PlayBook, RIM’s money-losing tablet computer, was the company’s first product to use a QNX operating system. Despite the BlackBerry brand’s strong association with e-mail, it arrived in April 2011 without e-mail software or the ability to directly synchronize users’ address books and calendars.
Software that was supposed to remedy those issues and others has been delayed and is now promised for February.
Mr. Misek, said that RIM initially tried to merge, or thread, some of its current operating system with QNX to speed up the development timetable. But that proved unsuccessful, forcing RIM to create more software code from scratch than it initially anticipated.
Michael Morgan, the senior analyst for mobile devices at ABI Research, said that many problems with BlackBerry 10 came from making it work on RIM’s network, which moves all BlackBerry data, giving corporate e-mail a high level of security and all users lower wireless data bills.
To accommodate people with both BlackBerry phones and PlayBook tablets, RIM had to redesign security features on its network, which currently allow only one hand-held device access to any given user’s account, Mr. Morgan said.
“When you change something that low level in an operating system, it has ramifications which affect every function,” Mr. Morgan said. “I’m really shocked by a nine-month delay.”
Like many analysts, Mr. Morgan also says he thinks that RIM is struggling to bring the long battery life that has been a hallmark of BlackBerrys to the new phones.
While the QNX operating system has a reputation for reliability, he said, it has been mainly used in situations where power consumption is not a significant concern. Many touch-screen navigation and control systems in cars, for example, use QNX. But automobiles carry large batteries and alternators that recharge them.
When ABI’s researchers disassembled PlayBook tablets, Mr. Morgan said, they found several systems to reduce power consumption. He said, however, that those measures might not be enough for phones that will have much smaller batteries than the PlayBook.
“QNX is being applied now in a place it hasn’t been before,” he said.
Adding to the problem is RIM’s decision to make the new phones operate on LTE networks. Most current chips that operate on those high-speed networks have a reputation for quickly draining batteries.
While LTE networks are relatively scarce today, they are likely to be an important selling point for new phones a year from now.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=ea617b9d79b782a2ce5857bdf5f26931
Speak Your Mind
You must be logged in to post a comment.