Rim and Its Acquisition Essay

One of the major challenges facing Apple was to get the appropriate replacement of the company’s visionary Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Steve Jobs who died on October 2011. The CEO was responsible for turning Apple into what it is today. Apple is in this case challenged to purse the strategies employed by Steve, that propelled the company to new heights, and which saw the company become a

The cost of equity was found using CAPM, with the given market risk premium of 5%, a beta of .88, and risk-free rate of 4.03%. The beta was found by running a regression of Southwest’s percent change in stock price versus the S&P 500’s percent change in stock price for two years (June 28, 2000 to June 28, 2002). The risk-free rate was the return on a ten-year treasury note issued on June 28, 2002, according to the U.S. Treasury’s website. The tax rate of 39% was used to account for tax savings from leverage. In order to calculate the firm’s leverage, the market value of equity was found from the price per share on July 24, 2002 (Yahoo Finance) and the shares outstanding on the balance sheet of the July 10-Q report, as shown in Exhibit X. The debt value was approximated at the book value since data could not be found regarding its market value. This analysis resulted in a debt weight of 11.74% and equity weight of 88.26%. The final approximation for the weighted average cost of capital was 8.64%.

Research In Motion (RIM) was founded by University of Waterloo engineering student Mike Lazaridis in 1984 who is the current Co-CEO. In 1988 RIM becomes the first wireless data technology developer in North America and the first company outside Scandinavia to develop connectivity products for Mobitex wireless packet-switched data communications networks. 1997 RIM becomes a publicly traded company on the Toronto Stock Exchange. 1999 RIM introduces the BlackBerry wireless email solution, BlackBerry Enterprise Server Software for Microsoft Exchange and signs a supple agreement with Dell. RIM has offices located in North America, Europe and in Asia-Pacific. The corporate structure of RIM consists of co-CEO’s Balsillie, who also holds the position of chairman, while Lazaridis is also the company president. There are two chief operating officers; a chief financial officer; a vice-president, Enterprise Business Unit; and vice-president, Corporate Marketing.

RIM faced some intellectual property challenges when there is a enormous challenge due to New Technology Products(NTP).NTP is a patent holder company in 2000.NTP enforces its patent portfolio against larger, well-established companies because it has branded as patent troll. The most important and remarkable case was against RIM.NTP has offered to license the patents to them by sending notices and wireless email patents to some of the businesses. Nobody has responded and none of the companies and industries took a license. RIM received patent infringement lawsuit from the NTP stating that RIM agreed for the license. This lawsuit was in the court for the six years. Finally it came to a extent that US Supreme Court has involved which became

The dual organizational leadership from the CEOs shows a style of the hindrance of impenitent to their decisions as communication was non-existent between staff and senior management. This groupthink behavior has been, apparently, bad for business and harms the cultural behavior among employees. Personal egos can get in the way of business if not dealt with properly. RIM has lost their focus from being the innovative company they were once known for, to being unyielding, blind, egocentric and hierarchical. Henceforth, the lacking effective communication with what the customer is portraying to the company as wrong with the device; executives fail to listen.

I chose to focus my attention on the General Motors Company. I chose General Motors because of the long history this organization has had at being the premier model of sustainment in the automobile industry for over 100 years. Many people might not own one of General Motors automobile brands but there is no doubting the legacy the General Motors brand has established. Not only is General Motors a well-known brand in the continental United States with its big four line up of Chevrolet. Buick, GMC, and Cadillac, but it is also a household name in Europe with the Opel, Vauxhall, and Holden brands, and on the Asian market with the Atobaojun, Wuling, and Faw Jiefang brands. General Motors is a diverse multicultural organization employing over 215 thousand people in six different countries stretching across 23 different time zones. The remainder of this paper will explore further into the General Motors organization by looking into six strategic management topics. Beginning with the explanation of how general Motors is able to attain behavioral control and the benefits of having the proper balance of culture, rewards, and boundaries. Understanding the importance of attaining behavioral control is important because today we more than ever we are faced with the obligation as leaders to do more with less and we must have a way to keep the organization moving forward while also keeping the employees motivated to do the same. A successful company must have a good

Likewise, Lexmark’s decline in inkjet exit revenues contributed to the so not-encouraging financial results. Exiting the inkjet printer industry and switching the business focus left Lexmark with a high amount of inventory in its deposits. Such an inventory added to the company’s losses that overcame its actual costs, and additional fees necessary to maintain the non-commercial inventory. A high drop in Lexmark’s stock intrinsic value could also be explained by the company’s desperate acquisitions and goodwill investments. The drastic and serious campaign that Lexmark launched into, when buying new companies meant to enhance shareholder value, can be seen as a very urgent strategic alternative that increases the company’s risk level and lowers its profitability rank. The idea of high risk tends to scare investors away and decrease the actual firm value, which in Lexmark’s case definitely ends up being negative.

For the business group the phone will be no frills and focused on being quick and well designed to appeal to people who want all their work on the go; a simple and slick design with focus on email and organizational planners. For the less tech savvy (40+) we want a phone that they don’t have to ask their kids how to use, very user friendly with obvious functions, large buttons and easy to read interface. These new user interfaces have the opportunity to expand into smaller demographics depending on what people want in the future. Along with the new user interfaces RIM will release a new ad campaign focusing on the new usability of the Storm with commercials and magazine/news paper ads focusing on the new interface designs of the Storm with a slogan of “Blackberry storm, it’s what YOU want”

In 2007 Blackberry, previously known as RIM, harvested it is success in the technology business and was named the most valuable company on Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) surpassing $67 billion in market capitalization (1). The company was a smartphone manufacturer leader and competed against fierce competitors such as Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, and others. Blackberry had a competitive advantage amongst these competitors especially in the business smartphones market. Its competitive advantage was in the secured systems that blackberry offered for business. Blackberry provided high secured platforms for governments especially in North America. Competitors are trying hard to enter this market. (2) Samsung has been trying to promote its dubbed Knox enterprise solution. Samsung provided tremendous resources to promote its dubbed Knox. However, Samsung has struggled to gain traction and has yet to announce any prominent clients for its Knox services.

This article talks about why Blackberry maker RIM may still have hope in the smartphone industry; meanwhile acknowledging that there is no longer any debate that BlackBerry is yesterday's technology. According to the article, RIM's once irrefutable position among business and government customers shows signs of eroding, as rivals like iPhone maker Apple make inroads. Competitive pressure in the U.S. is likely to increase if, as expected, Verizon Communications’

Newly appointed CEO of Research in Motion (RIM) Thorsten Heins is faced with many new challenges. The company’s stock price is at a new low, market share continues to decrease, and recent product failure contributes to the decline in consumer and investor confidence. Heins is considering the following three alternatives: 1) Continue to compete in the current smart phone consumer mass market; 2) Narrow or expand their product and marketing focus and determine where to best use their resources; 3) Make RIM an attractive target for acquisition.

This research analyzed BlackBerry Limited through the method of SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis it conducted was based on the facts that Blackberry had experienced a significant decrease of 38.5% in revenue during the fiscal year 2014. Compared to BlackBerry’s apparent weaknesses like poor financial performance and delayed product launches, it still holds strengths in terms of enterprise services, product design and device development. The positive outlook for smartphone and tablet markets will provide BlackBerry a great chance and motivation to develop new devices. Meanwhile, the cooperation with Foxconn is also a potential to drag up BlackBerry’s sales. However, threats such as intense competition from its

WMCHI’s net income for 2008 improved by .004 points, but reflected a 50% decline on its ability to use its assets as a source of revenue. Moreover, because of the company’s heavy reliance on borrowings from financial institutions to support its expansion, the return on their stockholder’s equity also went down by more than 50% of 2007’s figures. We can surmise that the company’s operating profit is not sufficient to give its shareholders a satisfying level

Building and managing a company to become successful takes lots of hard work and determination from the company’s management. The founders of the technology company Hewlett Packard (HP), Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard set out to do just that. The vision of success for the company was clear to the founders. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard formed a two-person company in a rented garage, which was the original Silicon Valley startup. Working with limited resources, the pair created a series of products and set the course for a legacy of innovation and leadership. However, this paper provides a review of the history, strategic direction, and the management practices that describes how HP encountered a downturn under one leader and

This paper presents the organizational behavior practices and their implications for the business at Google Inc. It begins with a brief introduction to the company and its operational setup and other aspects. The main body of the paper discusses the company's efforts to strengthen its organizational behavior and culture. It highlights the major benefits and programs which are aimed to improve the employee morale and improve their performance at the workplace; the job characteristics model for Googlers; and gives a summary of organizational behavior, culture, diversity management, communication systems, and business ethics which are the part of Google's business strategies. The paper concludes by summarizing the implications of organizational behavior for Google's business.