Research In Motion (RIMM) customers can now get their hands on the much anticipated BB10 operating system-based smartphones. BB10 faced numerous development delays and even missed some launch deadlines as the company was fine tuning the bits and pieces of the new phone. Along with the launch of BB10, the company took a major decision to change its identity and henceforth will be known as BlackBerry.
The Canadian handset manufacturer has innovated and designed two new LTE enabled smartphones based on its QNX software, which is compatible with various open-source coding languages. The newly launched Blackberry Z10 is a full touch screen smartphone while BlackBerry Q10 includes both touch and physical keyboard options.
The latest smartphones have a much faster and smarter operating system (OS) than the predecessors and have features like 1.5GHz dual core processors, 2GB RAM, 16GB storage and an expandable memory card slot. Additionally, the phone has an astonishing camera, a superfast browser and is preloaded with social sites like Facebook (FB), Twitter, Foursquare and LinkedIn (LNKD).
In an effort to lure back its enterprise clients, the company has added Microsoft Corporation’s (MSFT) Exchange ActiveSync, which allows its customers to get access of their work related mails. Furthermore, win a share of the booming video conferencing market the company has added Cisco’s (CSCO) WebEx technology, which will allow instant messaging, IP-based voice calls and conferencing to its users via smartphones.
Research In Motion has come up with some exciting elements like BlackBerry Hub, Flow, Balance along with its existing BlackBerry Messenger service. The new contact management features will enable customers to check the blog posts, emails, tweets and recent updates of their phone contacts in one place, which will allow its customers to stay updated about their friends and relatives.
BB10 OS will support some of the most popular gaming applications including Angry Bird from Rovio. Though the struggling handset manufacturer has tied up with several application developers and has nearly 70,000 applications, it still lags in the application front to Android and iOS.
Research In Motion, once the global leader of smartphones has been struggling since the last 3-4 years, as they failed to identify consumers’ preferences and has been battling in a crowded smartphone market mainly dominated by Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) iOS and Google Inc.’s (GOOG) Android Platform.
However, the launch failed to energize the shareholders as the stock slumped 12.00% to close at $13.78 in Nasdaq on Wednesday. The delayed launch of the phone in the lucrative US market might have pulled the shares down.
After the dual changes it remains to be seen how the company reacts to upcoming challenges from Samsung’s Galaxy S4 and iPhone 5S handset launch.
Currently, Research In Motion carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
APPLE INC (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis Report
CISCO SYSTEMS (CSCO): Free Stock Analysis Report
FACEBOOK INC-A (FB): Free Stock Analysis Report
GOOGLE INC-CL A (GOOG): Free Stock Analysis Report
LINKEDIN CORP-A (LNKD): Free Stock Analysis Report
MICROSOFT CORP (MSFT): Free Stock Analysis Report
RESEARCH IN MOT (RIMM): Free Stock Analysis Report
To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
Get all Zacks Research Reports and be alerted to fast-breaking buy and sell opportunities every trading day.
Be the first to comment