BlackBerry Messenger, BBM, which was previously thought to be BlackBerry’s life preserver may now be being chopped off and sold as a separate company. This isn’t surprising since BlackBerry has been in a slow death-spiral for the past couple of years. While bringing BlackBerry Messenger to other platforms like Android, Windows Phone and the iPhone might be great for consumers, it happening this late in the game is another sign of BlackBerry’s imminent demise. However, offering BBM for sale may only be to increase the perceived value of Blackberry as a whole before a sale of the entire company. For more on this story, here is Landon Robinson’s story from BestTechie.com.

Blackberry May Be Separating Messenger from Company Ahead of Potential Sale (via http://www.besttechie.com/)

Smartphone manufacturer BlackBerry may be working on a way to ?spinoff? its built-in messaging service, simply called BlackBerry Messenger, and turn it into its own ?valuable asset? before the company’s rumored potential sale occurs. This report comes out of The Wall Street Journal who is sourcing anonymous ?people familiar with the matter.?…

The dog days of summer have arrived. June 21st marked the first official day of summer, when the Earth’s semi-axis in the Northern Hemisphere reached its maximum incline tilt of 23° 26′ towards the sun – the Summer Solstice. With the basketball season over now, the only thing to keep us sports fans occupied is baseball, beer, and barbecues – but hey, I’m not complaining about that. So take a break from counting down the minutes until your weekend starts and let’s reflect on what’s happened over the last month in the tech world.

The Downfall of Research in Motion

Oh, how the mighty have fallen! The former king of the smartphone industry, RIM, is dying at a rapid rate… and employees and stockholders alike are making it known to the world. Yesterday, a high-level RIM employee sent an anonymous open letter to the RIM Senior Management Team that ripped the company apart. RIM, on the defensive, responded by issuing its own statement to the public concerning the letter. In the end though, Research in Motion is freefalling and investors are clamoring for a top-down restructuring of the company, but really, can anyone save BlackBerry?

The Future of Apple

OS X Lion is nearing a public launch for July, after Apple “seeded the golden master version of OS X Lion to developers” earlier today. “OS X Lion brings many innovations from iOS including home screens (called Launchpad in Lion), autosaving, full screen application interfaces, and auto resume in apps. This is in addition to native support for the Mac App Store, Mission Control, an all new email client, built-in FaceTime, and interface and feature  improvements through out the operating system. Lion also includes AirDrop file sharing, multi-user remote computer access, and Find my Mac (through iCloud).” – Source: 9to5Mac

Apple has done significantly well this quarter, and it is estimated that users of the iOS platform alone generates roughly $150 of revenue a year per account (not including the cost of the actual iOS device). The iPhone, however, has a ton of competition these days and the biggest threat may be the Samsung Galaxy S II – the follow-up to one of the most popular Android phones, the Galaxy S.

“LulzSec” Hackers: Attacking the Internet

After hacking the CIA, PBS, and numerous other web sites, it looks like LulzSec’s run of terror has finally come to an end. The group announced on multiple web sites that it would be disbanding on Monday, but did not provide any particular reason for the decision. For 50 days LulzSec hacked and terrorized corporations and governments for the sake of humor, and hopefully this is the last we hear of their exploits.

Photo by DrCrawford via DeviantArt

We may soon be saying R-I-P to R-I-M, the maker of the once beloved BlackBerry smartphone. After reducing their initial profit forecast roughly two months ago, Research in Motion announced its first quarter financial earnings results yesterday which were almost $1 billion lower than expected. Although RIM managed to ship 13.2 million BlackBerry devices and 500,000 BlackBerry Playbook tablets during the quarter, the discouraging news of the drop in profit and revenue caused shares in the company to fall 14 percent in after-hours trading last night. Now, Research in Motion is going to cut costs through “headcount reductions”… meaning layoffs are on the way.

RIM is quickly fading into oblivion behind the new giants in the business – Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. Jarislowsky Fraser Ltd., Research in Motion’s sixth-largest investor, just revealed that it would be dumping all of its 10.2 million shares in the company, with the chairman of the investment group leaving this ominous quote,” We are on the way out. The stake has been reduced by more than 50% or even more… They are resting on their laurels … Steve Jobs is a much better marketer than RIM.”

So what is RIM’s main problem? Delays in production… and the fact that their technology is not keeping up with competitors’. No new products will be released by the company during the summer until August, the latest BlackBerry OS 7.0 update coming out won’t even work for most of the current models, and who honestly wants to buy a PlayBook over another tablet?

Co-CEO Jim Balsillie announced in a press release:

“Fiscal 2012 has gotten off to a challenging start. The slowdown we saw in the first quarter is continuing into Q2, and delays in new product introductions into the very late part of August is leading to a lower than expected outlook in the second quarter… RIM’s business is profitable and remains solid overall with growing market share in numerous markets around the world and a strong balance sheet with almost $3 billion in cash. We believe that with the new products scheduled for launch in the next few months and realigning our cost structure, RIM will see strong profit growth in the latter part of fiscal 2012.”

With investors’ confidence already shaken, this statement does not provide much reassurance, and the outlook is looking very grim for a company that was once considered the world leader in the smartphone market.

Photo by darkscher via deviantART