Following up on my Research in Motion commentary in This Quarter Offers a Lot of Challenges for Smart Phone Vendors with Fruit in Their Names!, I'd like to comment on potential future paths for the company. From what I see from their public announcements, I remain as unimpressed now as I was just before (After Getting a Glimpse of the New Windows Phone 7 Functionality, RIMM is Looking More Like a Short Play) and after (RIM Smart Phone Market Share, RIP?) the OS6/Torch launch. The tricky part is that RIMM is now starting to look rather inexpensive relative to consensus earnings and historically projected growth rates. This is where a little strategic foresight comes into play. I have made available for download (for all paying subscribers) the Mobile Operating System Market Share Model which illustrates, on a very granular level, the market share movements (gains and losses)  of the major mobile OS providers.

Research in Motions recent equity share decline stems not only from market share loss, but from the apparent lack of a clear cut and believable plan to stem that market share loss.

My series on the battle for mobile computing dominance is now over 21 articles long. It was started less than a month ago, yet so many things have changed since then. Google's strategic initiatives are blooming and it is showing that Google's management is capable of executing at a very high level with a very distant level of foresight. Their investment in broadband services, mobile OSs, and cloud services have virtually guaranteed them a very viable path outside of their current core reliance on search ad revenue. The issues on the plate for interested parties are a) quantifying the monetizaton to be had from such efforts (it is not necessarily bullish for the equity in this particular environment), b) gauging the progress and potential of Google's biggest and most capable competitors in this race (although Google looks to be successful in diversifying, that doesn't necessarily mean it will win the mobile computing wars, and c) as always, get the timing right.

I have went into this in detail in the first four installments of my mobile war seriers:

1. There Is Another Paradigm Shift Coming in Technology and Media: Apple, Microsoft and Google Know its Winner Takes All
2. The Mobile Computing and Content Wars: Part 2, the Google Response to the Paradigm Shift
3. An Introduction to How Apple Apple Will Compete With the Google/Android Onslaught
4. Don’t Count Microsoft Out of the Ultra-Mobile Computing Wars Just Yet

The second article listed, "Google's response" had a very interesting graphic in it that many may have missed...

Notice how Google has directly funded all of the technologies that have converged to threaten to topple Apple’s smartphone hegemony? Sprint’s 4G Wimax tech, HTC’s collaborative use of the Android OS and the customization of the interface through HTC Sense! Google is, and has been for the last two years, Apples bigges

On July 29th, I said After Getting a Glimpse of the New Windows Phone 7 Functionality, RIMM is Looking More Like a Short Play. RIM came out with the new Blackberry Torch and OS 6, but I remained unconvinced, and blogged RIM Smart Phone Market Share, RIP?. After some due diligence, I released a full forensic report for my subscribers, Many More Black Eyes for the Blackberry? A Complete Forensic Analysis of Research in Motion wherein I promised to give professional and institutional subscribers access to a plug and play Research in Motion "specific" valuation model that they can use to layer their own market share, penetration, growth and margin assumptions to use our proprietary, internal analytics to produce their own custom valuations. To assist those who don't follow the industry closely, I have also made available an interactive Smartphone Market Model that was built using data from Gartner, Neilson, and Canalys, among other sources.

Before I go on I want to bring to the attention of all how the market is now starting to realize what I have been claiming in my blog, and that is that Research in Motion is flirting with becoming the next Palm, and failing in the market. RIM has fallen farther than its competing handset vendors (both in market share and equity share price) who use Android, iOS and Symbian, and has also underperformed the broad market, and by a very material margin. OTM option prices have jumped significantly, rewarding those who followed the lead on BoomBustBlog.

I have been posting frequently on the many apparent misconceptions people have regarding Apple. It has produced a lot of response, and depending on where the posts wind up, quite the fervent response. It is an understatement to say that many Apple followers are quite emotional and passionate (reference these 100 or so responses from a syndicated article on Seeking Alpha, you may have to wash your eyes out with soap afterward). As a matter of fact, I have found that many Apple customers and investors seem to have forgotten that this is a C corporation, and not a sentient being or a reigning deity over a worldwide religion. If there was such a thing as a C corporation Jihad... Apple Corp. is by far one of the most preeminent marketing concerns in the world, and as a for-profit entity, potentially the most successful viral marketer, EVER! This is Apple's core strength, and this is - by far - their biggest advantage over their competition. Not their OS, nor their tech, nor their feature set, but their viral marketing prowess. At this point, second to none, and my hats off to management. Kudos! Alas, I digress...

Apple is one of the three companies that I see as being in the running to reign supreme in the current mobile computing paradigm shift. They are not the front runner though, see:

1. There Is Another Paradigm Shift Coming in Technology and Media: Apple, Microsoft and Google Know its Winner Takes All
2. The Mobile Computing and Content Wars: Part 2, the Google Response to the Paradigm Shift
3. An Introduction to How Apple Apple Will Compete With the Google/Android Onslaught
4. Don’t Count Microsoft Out of the Ultra-Mobile Computing Wars Just Yet

Among much of the fervent rhetoric was a very sane response from a reader that I would like to share with my constituency, along with my response to him.

A couple of weeks ago, I penned the piece "After Getting a Glimpse of the New Windows Phone 7 Functionality, RIMM is Looking More Like a Short Play". As explained in that article, many are prematurely discounting the success of Microsoft in the mobile space. It wasn't the wise thing to do in the browser space, the gaming console space, or the enterprise server space (all of which took time to gain inertia and momentum), and I don't feel it is wise to do in the mobile space either - despite the temptation to do so born from the apparent mismanagement of the mobile OS platform. More importantly, it brings up the topic of stickiness and permanency in the enterprise space and (in my oh so humble opinion), the only thing that is keeping Research in Motion from sheer and utter collapse.

In the aforementioned blog post, I made it clear that MSFT is uniquely positioned to assail RIM in its bread and butter Exchange functionality stronghold, being that MSFT is the creator of Exchange. It was just a matter of time before MSFT had to make this move, and facing the demise of its mobile platform, now is the time to make it. Of course, there are some stalwart Blackberry users and RIMM investors who feel the threat to RIM is over blown. If you peruse the comment section of Seeking Alpha, you can see where I syndicated the aforementioned article and it received 88 emotionally charged, passionate and downright vociferous comments from retail investors defending their favorite handset, company or investment. The amount of emotion vs empirical analysis is a red flag, in and of itself. One point brought up by the many commenters was that RIM is about to introduce new tech, which I was not very excited about. Days later, they released it, and I responded with RIM Smart Phone Market Share, RIP? It appears as if I was correct in my assumption that RIM was going to miss the mark with their new hardware/software refresh. They are playing catch up, and have not even caught up yet - as Apple becomes as popular as ever (even encroaching upon the long sacred enterprise) in the smart phone space and Android grows like a mutant weed, literally disrupting the entire industry. Below, you can find excerpts of our most recent forensic analysis and valuation of Research in Motion. Enjoy and prolific investing!

So, Where did RIM Go Wrong?

^{Note: Charts below created with data sourced from Neilsen, Gartner, Canalys.}