NEW YORK (
TheStreet) --
Research In Motion (
RIMM) just cannot catch a break.
RIM hit a new five-year low Wednesday as the company announced its delayed new BlackBerry lineup.
The flailing Ontario tech shop introduced three phones -- an updated BlackBerry Torch, the long-awaited touchscreen Bold, and a touchscreen Torch with no keyboard. And the real kicker was the little detail about how the sales launch would begin later this month.
The late arrival punctuates what has been a jarring collapse this year of the formerly beloved BlackBerry maker. RIM missed a
crucial turn in the smartphone market and management has been seen as
ineffective in its response.
The new phones will finally fill in a gaping product void for RIM. But the new BlackBerry 7 operating system can be seen as little more than a placeholder as the company and investors await the next generation of QNX devices that are aimed to compete more directly with leaders like
Apple (
AAPL) and
Google's (
GOOG) Android system.
RIM's situation is very similar to
Nokia's (
NOK). The Finnish phone giant is losing market share and suffering revenue erosion as its current phones fail to hold consumer interest as everyone awaits its new-generation Microsoft Windows Phone 7 devices, which should start to arrive later this year.
The new crop of BlackBerries are headed to
AT&T (
T),
T-Mobile and
Sprint (
S), with
Verizon (
VZ) apparently and curiously left out of the mix.
Company representatives said the phones are still "going through certification with Verizon."
RIM shares fell briefly Wednesday to $24.10, a five-year low, but the shares subsequently bounced up 2% later in the pre-market session.
--Written by Scott Moritz in New York. To contact this writer, click here:
Scott Moritz, or email: scott.moritz@thestreet.com.
Follow Scott on Twitter at
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