Research In Motion usage down 25% in a year

RIM now accounts for only 1% of all mobile traffic

It’s such a familiar refrain these days: what the EXPLETIVE is going on at Research In Motion?

RIM was once a leader in smartphone technology, creating both the hardware and software for its ultra popular Blackberry line. Something has gone terribly wrong at the company over the last few years, though, and the news just keeps getting worse.

Blackberry devices, including the Playbook tablet, have seen their usage drop 25% in a single year, said a report from Chitika Insights.

The devices now account for a mere 1% of all mobile traffic.

Yes, you read that correctly: 1%.

Unfortunately for RIM, that is not even the lowest its ever been for the company: from December 2011 to March 2012, it was lower than 1%.

Meanwhile, Apple has seen its share go from 35% to 63% in the same time frame.

RIM is a company that, according to comScore, once had 43% of the smartphone market share, but that was back in January 2010 and its shares have only slipped since then. Now it seems like there is not much further down it can go.

Just the latest hit for RIM

The fall of RIM, from the premiere smartphone company to laughingstock, is becoming difficult to watch. The company is dying, and I kind of wish someone would put it out of its misery already.

How bad are things getting at the company?

In June, RIM announced that, in the first quarter of fiscal 2013, it saw its revenue sink 33% to $2.8 billion from $4.2 billion in the prior quarter. The $4.2 billion in sales from the previous quarter was down 25% from the quarter before that.

RIM also announced that it would be laying off 5,000 workers and that it would be delaying the release of the BlackBerry 10 until 2013. The dismal news caused the company stock to dip 19% in a single day.

While CEO Thorstein Heins insists that his company is doing fine, telling reporters, “There’s nothing wrong with the company as it exists right now,” it has come out that RIM is so strapped for cash that it is going to sell its corporate jet just to make $6 million.

And, as if to add insult to injury, last month a jury in a San Franciso federal court sided against RIM in a lawsuit brought by Mformation Technologies that stretches back to 2008, when Mformation sued RIM over patents relating to RIM’s remote management system for wireless devices, called BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

RIM is being forced to pay $8 for every BlackBerry that is connected to RIM’s Enterprise Server software. Since 18.4 million BlackBerrys are connected, that comes to $147.2 million in total, money that RIM can hardly afford to lose right now.

Please, someone, make it stop!

RIM shares to were down 0.4% on Friday, ending at $7.47.

Research In Motion was not available for comment.

(Image source: hispanicfanatic.com)