More Videos
- Social Networking's 'Naked' Truth
- Microsoft Plays a Game of Bing Pong
- Klutzy Woz Becomes Auto Body Pitchman
- Google Goes After Microsoft, Kind Of
- Flip Backfires on Cisco's John Chambers
- TeleMedicine Gets An Apple App Store Facelift
- iPhone Gets Big Stamp of Approval
- Jobs Returns, But Who's Running the Show?
- Jackson Juices Yahoo's Traffic
- Jackson, Inc. Becoming An Online Boom
|
CNBC'S MOST SHARED
- Unemployed? Bored? Make Money Playing Beer Pong
- Social Networking's 'Naked' Truth
- WPP's Sir Martin Sorrell on the Ad Recession
- The Highest Grossing (Inflation Adjusted) Movies of All Time
- Merrill's McCann Seen as UBS Wealth Frontrunner
- Geek Squad V. Gizmodo
- Warren Buffett's Top Three Investment Rules for the Average American
- Why You Should Watch Fund Flows
- Roginsky: No More Mr. Nice Guy
- Eric Schmidt on Government Scrutiny and Economic Recovery
- Market 360: The Week's Best & Worst
- Geek Squad V. Gizmodo
- Brandt: Google Chrome OS in the Post-PC Age
- Other People Are Weirder Than We Are
- Bank Failures: Is The Nightmare Over? (Video)
- California Here I Go? No.
- Roginsky: No More Mr. Nice Guy
- Commercial Conundrum
- Stimulus Will Kick in Later this Year: President Obama
- Lender CIT Group Hires Premier Bankruptcy Adviser
- Government Selling Bank Stakes for Too Cheap: Panel
- Buffett's Top 3 Investment Rules for Average Americans
- Market Insider: Earnings Loom in the Week Ahead
- Bulls Get Summertime Blues, But It's Hot Fun for Bears
- As Banks Fail, Strong Institutions Become More Visible
- GM IPO in Second Quarter 2010 at the Earliest: CFO
- Merrill's McCann Seen as UBS Wealth Frontrunner
RSS FEED
Text Size 
In my earlier post about Research in Motion's bitter earnings miss, I speculated that before investors rush off to sell their Apple shares in sympathy -- worried that iPhone sales might also be slow too -- they may want to study RIM's reasons for its shortfall.
And that appears to be good advice.
On RIM's conference call, it admitted that an enormous marketing push to fend off the coming iPhone onslaught was a key factor in the earnings miss.
More specifically, RIM spent nearly $380 million on marketing and advertising its BlackBerry. It's an enormous figure no one was counting on. We had an inkling that costs might be on the rise, but certainly not something like this.
So, as RIM's shares [RIMM
Loading...
()
] fall, and Apple's [AAPL
Loading...
()
] begin to recover from their sympathy slide, take the news in stride: RIM appears not to be scared to spend money to make money. But it didn't work all that well, since device sales still fell short of expectations.
Bottomline: RIM is taking steps to ward off Apple. That's the good news. The bad news for RIM, and the good news for Apple: That RIM has to spend this kind of money to try to get that job done. And it still didn't work. Which means it'll have to spend more next quarter.
Ouch.
Questions? Comments?
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes