The death spiral of Research in Motion appeared to get even more steep as the device maker reported a huge miss Thursday in its quarterly earnings and reported that its savior platform, BlackBerry 10, will not be ready until next year. The new operating system was supposed to debut at the end of this year, but the news now means RIM will lose yet another cycle and miss out on big holiday sales.
The company also announced 5,000 job cuts as it tries to trim costs. But the bigger news is the delay of BlackBerry 10. The company has been struggling through delays of previous products and an inability to execute in a timely manner. This new delay will only give rise to more concern that RIM is finished and won’t be able to mount a comeback against Apple and Google.
In the same month in which Apple showed off iOS 6 and Google debuted Android 4.1, the last thing RIM wanted to do was announce that BlackBerry 10, which is based on its QNX platform, wouldn’t make it to market on time. I don’t know how RIM survives this and it really does make you wonder how much urgency the company feels toward this turnaround. I
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