Blackberry Circles the Drain

Blackberry is circling the drain. So says analyst Eric Jackson in an interview with the bomb-throwing blog Business Insider. "It's a bad software company" he says, with "bad cofounders, and they're going to drive this company straight into the ground."

It's entirely possible we could see the end of Research in Motion this year, bought up by a healtheir company. Palm vanished, bought up during its last gasps by Hewlett Packard, a company which knows something about lousy selling products.

Microsoft can afford to keep its lousy-selling Windows phone on the market through sheer willpower. But it did kill its own Kin after just weeks on the market.

Blackberry's problems are twofold. First, it's facing obvious competition from iPhone and Android.  That competition will get more fierce as more and more corporations bend to employees' demands and allow enterprise email on devices other than Blackberry.

The second problem: RIM's phones suck. Slow, buggy and starved for apps. The company released four new phones Wednesday, including an all-touch device similar to iPhone, but they will not be available until the end of the month.

"New BlackBerry Phones Fall Short" says Forbes.  "New Phones Not Enough" says Barron's.

For now, Blackberry's only hope is enterprise. Big-boy and -girl venture capitalists, high strung entrepreneurs and captains of industry still use Blackberry, almost exclusively.

The signs are grim, however.  Research in Motion just laid off 2,000 employees. Apple, for what it's worth, is hiring.

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