I may be a bit biased (since RIM is based fairly close to where I live) but the press has been preaching doom scenarios for RIM for years. Years ago, it was Nokia or Motorola or Sony or whatever. Rumours of the first iPhone brought more predictions of gloom. All that happened was RIM made more money through hardware sales, added more subscriptions (where they really make their money), and made even more money.

According to BNET, the profit jumped last quarter. Their summary:

RIM said its revenue was $2.58 billion, up 88 percent from $1.37 billion a year earlier. Analysts had forecast $2.59 billion. For the third quarter, it said it expects revenue of between $2.95 billion and $3.1 billion.

The company said it added 2.6 million subscribers and that its total base is now about 19 million.

So, sales went up 88%, missing the analyst target by only 4/10 of 1%. Subscriptions (their bread and butter; or the gift that keeps on giving) went UP 15% in one quarter (if I read the numbers right; it's sometimes hard to tell as the business press can be sloppy with their terminology). Does this sound like a company under distress to you?

My feeling is that their stock price was way over-valued even by normal tech standards. But hey, I'm not the one putting money on the line, so my opinion doesn't matter!

Finally, now that AT&T has realized that iPhone network traffic is substantially higher than the equivalent Blackberry traffic (something about how RIM has designed their protocols), maybe AT&T will have to charge more for iPhone subscriptions.

I'm not saying the RIM has all the answers, and that they won't get hurt by Apple's products. I'm just saying the current situation hasn't shown it yet. Maybe Apple should bribe the NHL to allow Balsille to buy an NHL team and move it to Ontario. That might distract him enought that RIM might lose its focus.