Following a 
RIM can’t seem to get back on its feet. Amidst falling sales, and shareholder discontent, the smartphone make is now dealing with a three-day long service outage that seems to be spreading, rather than abating. The outage started in the Middle East as well as parts of Europe and Asia, but now reports indicate that it may also be affecting some US and Canadian users.
Research in Motion has been struggling lately to find a solid direction for it’s iconic Blackberry OS, but a recent acquisition might give us a few clues as to what the Canadian device maker has in store for the future. According to AllThingsD, RIM has dropped down an estimated $100 million to buy NewBay, a cloud-based media management service, which allows users to store and share pictures, videos, and anything else they’d care to broadcast.
Last weekend we noticed that RIM was experimenting with a $200 price cut in Canada, however, with the unveiling of the Amazon Fire the company has decided to not just move its discount across the border, 
Research In Motion has put itself in a bit of a pickle with its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. RIM launched the device before it was fully cooked and it jumped into the mobile fray missing critical features like native email, calendar, and contacts support. In 
RIM just reported earnings that were even more miserable than expected. We've already said why the company is cooked. But is there any way it can be salvaged? Well, just maybe there is.
Research In Motion (RIM) reported second quarter results for the three month period ended August 27, 2011, and a cursory glance would lead one to believe RIM is on top of the world. RIM reports service revenue surpassed the $1 billion mark for the first time, its BlackBerry subscribe base is up 40 percent year-over-year to surpass 70 million, and BlackBerry smartphone shipments are estimated to grow up to 37 percent in Q3. But wait a minute, how can RIM be doing so well when all anyone talks about are iOS and Android?
The past several weeks have seen some interesting developments in the tablet space. Hewlett Packard's discontinuation of its TouchPad and subsequent $99 firesale continues to be the big story, but it's not the only one. It appears Amazon is getting ready to launch an affordable 7-inch tablet, and perhaps in anticipation, Best Buy just dropped the price of the BlackBerry PlayBook.
For the record, the Maximum PC Lab keeps both feet planted squarely in the present tense. We don’t believe anyone should buy hardware based solely on its future potential. So what then to make of RIM’s nascent and decidedly half-baked Blackberry Playbook? Unless you’re 1) a Blackberry owner, 2) don’t care about apps or games, or 3) a devoted BB fanboy, the answer is: not much.
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