It's official: RIM (Nasdaq: RIMM) is my worst call ever.
The company can't do anything right these days. Its first quarter loss was a disgrace, and its delay of Blackberry 10 even more so. BB10 is quickly reaching Duke Nukem Forever levels of vaporware excellence. (All right, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but you catch my drift.)
At this point in time, there's only one honorable thing RIM can do for its besieged owners, i.e. you, the common shareholder: Sell itself. Either as a whole, or via an orderly liquidation of core assets.
Take the deal, RIM. It's time to plea this one out.
RIM still has valuable tangible and intangible assets in hand, but it's clear that they're not going to matter as long as RIM is all out by its lonesome, and hemorrhaging cash. The Blackberry platform is mostly obsolete now, and the three-headed Cerberus of Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) ain't gonna wait for BB10 to amble out of bed. Jelly Bean, iPhone 5, and Windows 8 Phone are right around the corner.
In tech, it's execute or die. And thus far, RIM has chosen death.
To be honest, I should have known this after listening to last year’s conference call. The then co-CEOs, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, had fear and self-delusion dripping from their voices. But I ignored that in favor of cold hard numbers.
Note to self: If the conference call sounds like two young perps trying to persuade a cop -- and themselves -- of their innocence, forget about the numbers.
The other thing that got me was how extraordinarily bearish the media was. Normally, when the media all thinks one thing is going to happen, it’s priced in, or they're just plain wrong (*cough* … health care ruling … *cough*). But there's always the exception that proves the rule.
There is such a thing as being too contrarian.
