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Comment by wavephorm | Hacker News Reader

The fact that it took this long for the CEO's to step down reflects the extreme arrogance of this company. I've attended a few RIM-sponsored events in the Waterloo, and it's downright shocking how cocky the reps and developers are. RIM appears to be living in its own little tech bubble, blissfully ignorant that pretty much everywhere else in the first world owns or will own an iPhone.

This company makes a lot of money, they still have a lot of marketshare, but there's no question they are in a serious downdraft. It would be completely normal for any company in this situation to put itself up for sale. I'm a little surprised Google choose to buy Motorola Mobility rather than RIM, given that RIM has a lower market value and has more attractive assets.

Regardless of what it says in the press I imagine finding a potential acquirer of the company will be the first task of the new CEO.

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"...blissfully ignorant that pretty much everywhere else in the first world owns or will own an iPhone"

Speaking of living in a bubble...

What I meant was that RIM and their execs have been insulated from the true damage being done to their business and more importantly their mindshare among developers. Apple's success with iPhone and iPad is absolutely not what I'd call a bubble.

You suggested that Apple has some kind of majority market share or something. They don't. Hence, your bubble is showing.

Depends on the metrics used, Apple has 52% of smartphone profit:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2011/11/04/apple-t...

But the metric your post used was Handsets, not Profit: "everywhere else in the first world owns or will own an iPhone."

I made a generalization, I didn't use metrics.

In any case, I find this type of pedantry kind of annoying. I made a point about RIM losing marketshare, my point was not about what percentage of a certain market Apple owns.

It's not really pedantry, though. You said that everyone does or will own an iPhone- that's demonstrably not true.

Nitpicking one aspect of my argument that RIM declines in marketshare based on whether my argument that Apple is or will become the dominant mobile platform is most certainly the absolute definition of pedantry.

It depends on if you are counting devices versus OS... Android sells more than iOS, but the numbers are split amongst all the manufacturers.

"Android handsets vs iPhones", not "Android vs iOS". iOS as a platform includes iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and AppleTV.

We'll have to wait until tomorrow [1] to find out whether Android as a platform has a bigger marketshare than iOS does.

[1] http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/01/20FY-12-First-Quarte...

>This company makes a lot of money, they still have a lot of marketshare, but there's no question they are in a serious downdraft. It would be completely normal for any company in this situation to put itself up for sale.

So you would sell a profitable company with a large market share?

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