RIM obviously wants to fight back on their market share loss to Apple, Google and others, and I’m glad they do.
RIM Getting Ready for a Big Summer – Geek with Laptop
So RIM has two CEOs, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis.
I doubt that tablets can compensate for loss in smartphone sales, partly considering how strong Apple is in this market (considerably stronger than on the smartphone market) and also because tablets don’t sell nearly as much as phones, yet with similar margin, so it’s good they will release a range of new phones soon, hopefully with “full frontal” displays.
“We have been focusing on the other 93 percent of the global market. We do need great products in the U.S., but this is a global business.”
“Global sales for RIM devices were up 38 percent for the year, with figures especially strong in the UK, the Netherlands, and Indonesia.”
There’s a related article about TAT that RIM acquired recently:
RIM Buys Design Company in a Bid to Help their Brand – Geek with Laptop
TAT is not primarily a design company, but an ISV providing UI engine software, and their software is used in many millions of phones, primarily simpler phones than smartphones.
What they did in terms of Android initially was though design, and their involvement there has been blown out of proportion. As you probably know, Android Inc and Skia Inc (both acquired by Google) provided the actual UI software in Android. I know several of the people at TAT (prior colleagues of mine), so I’m not guessing.