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Current DateTime: 01:22:07 23 Nov 2009
LinksList Documentid: 31047929
Expiration DateTime: 11/23/2009 1:23:29 PM

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Current DateTime: 01:22:07 23 Nov 2009
LinksList Documentid: 31047922
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Tech Check

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Sep.25
7:54 PM ET

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.

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© 2009 CNBC, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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