Earlier today, RIM announced its quarterly earnings and the results were grim. The company’s revenue is down 33 percent year over year and device sales are slumping. To make a bad situation even worse, RIM announced that technical challenges have forced it to delay the launch of BlackBerry 10 until 2013. As result of this disappointing news, the company’s stock fell 14% percent in after-hours trading and people are predicting the inevitable demise of RIM as we know it.
Speaking to sources familiar with the matter, Reuters says RIM’s board of directors is under pressure to make significant changes that’ll reverse this downward slide. The company is reportedly considering an alliance of some sorts with Microsoft. This option would let RIM drop development of the QNX-based BlackBerry 10 and adopt Windows Phone as it primary operating system. Under this plan, RIM would no longer be an independent company and would rely on Microsoft to fund some its research and development. Microsoft
Another option would be the sale of RIM’s network infrastructure to a private equity firm. RIM could spin off this part of its business and let the buyer open it up to other handsets. In this scenario, RIM’s network would be considered an asset, which leaves room to legally split the network business from the handset business if it fails.
[Via Reuters]