Blackberry: During boom times being an investment banker – or at least looking like one – was cool. That made shiny new gadgets from Research in Motion the accoutrement of choice for wannabe dealmakers and financial engineering acolytes. But if the latest numbers from RIM are any proxy, being an investment banker is looking a bit passé.
Blackberrys used to be standard issue for the financial professional class. Wall Streeters and their foreign cousins made up more than 15 per cent of RIM’s total subscribers a few years ago, according to analysts. So it’s only natural that aspiring financiers, perhaps green-eyed at bankers' dominance over money centres like London and New York, would snap up the phones in emulation.
While that could have helped them snatch tables at hot restaurants like Per Se, without doubt RIM benefitted. The Canadian company grabbed a whopping 55 per cent of the smartphone market. Trouble is, the company’s latest quarterly figures seem to suggest a shifting tide.
RIM sold 7.8 million Blackberrys last quarter, or 6 per cent less than it expected. And subscriber additions came in nearly 10 per cent below expectations. The company can’t blame the smartphone market, where overall sales grew 13 per cent in May, despite weak consumer spending.
Blackberry envy may have been replaced by a new stud – Apple’s iPhone. Sales of the hip device more than doubled last quarter. And the company just released a faster and cheaper version of the phone, which is likely to give it another boost.
Now that populist governments around the world are denigrating bankers as the engineers of financial Armageddon, perhaps the allure of the Blackberry is gone. Even the Pre, a new device from nearly-defunct gadget-maker Palm, seems to be benefiting from attempts at Wall Street differentiation. Palm should ship more than 500,000 Pre’s by the end of August, according to Pacific Crest analysts.
RIM is still the de-facto leader in the smartphone market. And smartphones represent just a small portion of overall mobile phone sales - RIM doesn’t crack the top five. So the company’s numbers don’t mean its future as a luxury accessory is permanently finished. The coolness of bankers? Well, that may be a different story.
