{"id":14088,"date":"2012-05-30T14:30:57","date_gmt":"2012-05-30T12:30:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=14088"},"modified":"2012-05-30T15:38:04","modified_gmt":"2012-05-30T13:38:04","slug":"rim-strategy-shift-met-with-skepticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/14088\/rim-strategy-shift-met-with-skepticism\/","title":{"rendered":"RIM strategy shift met with skepticism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Research In Motion Ltd’s<\/a> move to hire bankers for a strategic review and scout for partnerships prompted a slew of price-target cuts from analysts, who were skeptical about the BlackBerry<\/a> maker’s ability to attract a buyer.<\/p>\n

The company on Tuesday said it hired bankers from J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and RBC Capital Markets to help evaluate its strategies.<\/p>\n

“A potential buyer remains uncertain, and potentially a long shot in our judgment,” analysts at Robert W. Baird said, adding they would be surprised by an acquisition by an existing OEM.<\/p>\n

“Microsoft<\/a> is likely to be rumored, though given its focus on Windows 7 and 8, that seems increasingly unlikely to us,” they said.<\/p>\n

BMO Capital Markets, which too cut its price-target on the stock to $9 from $11, does not see a buyer either for the device business or the network business.<\/p>\n

The Waterloo, Ontario-based company is struggling to retain its top talent after a series of high-level executive departures in recent weeks, and now finds itself struggling in the smartphone market, trailing Apple and other rivals.<\/p>\n

“We continue to remain cautious on RIM and are reducing our estimates … We believe that the company’s integrated strategy is too far behind Apple’s<\/a>,” Wedbush Securities said in a note.<\/p>\n

However, JMP Securities upgraded RIM stock to “market perform” from “market underperform” after the company issued the cautionary update, largely based on valuation.<\/p>\n

RIM’s U.S.-listed shares were down 8 percent at $10.29 before the markets opened on Wednesday. They closed at $11.23 on Tuesday on the Nasdaq<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Research In Motion Ltd’s move to hire bankers for a strategic review and scout for partnerships prompted a slew of price-target cuts from analysts, who were skeptical about the BlackBerry maker’s ability to attract a buyer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[25,161,157],"class_list":["post-14088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-active","tag-blackberry","tag-rim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14088"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14113,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14088\/revisions\/14113"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}