What iPhone? Research in Motion Leapfrogs Apple

Hickey and Walters (Bespoke) submit: When the iPhone was first unveiled in January, one of the major reactions outside of Apple's (AAPL) stock was in Research in Motion (RIMM), as the stock immediately fell $11 on the day Steve Jobs first announced the new product. Some said the iPhone and its crisp graphics and sleek design would hurt sales for RIMM.

So far that doesn't seem to be the case. After reporting better than expected earnings results last night, RIMM is trading up 18% from yesterday's close and is now outperforming AAPL by a considerable margin since the unveiling of the iPhone (+49% vs. +31%) on January 9th.

In the table below, we have highlighted all large gap openings (greater than 10%) for RIMM since 2003 along with the reason for each of the moves. Based on these occurrences, the average gain from the open to close is 3.7%, although we would note that the results are somewhat skewed by the 19% gain on 12/23/03.

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Comments

[Tom B]

RIMM has 5 more years of life. That's a long time in tech. Money can be made. I'd advise taking profits sooner rather than later, though, obviously.

[John Lazerow]

There's plenty of room for more than one successful smartphone maker - iPhone won't make a dent in BB sales for a while. Just look at the distribution issue Apple faces right now. They are launching on 1 carrier in 1 country. RIM added 20 carriers last quarter alone and now distributes through 300 carriers worldwide (but had over 750 carriers at WES - so there's room to grow). In 5 years, BB will have many more subscribers and be even more entrenched in enterprise with their PBX integration suite that provides full pbx functionality on the BB and gives workers one telephone number that rings at the desktop and mobile. Add the consumer push, and this story should have legs for a while. Business that is still accelerating. I am long both AAPL and RIMM and it will stay that way for a while.

[ses01]

Where do you think rimm goes in the next few days?

[Brewer]

What did you think of Apple a few years ago? I thought so. Too late to join the party? I don't think so.

[peatmoss]

Rimm is so yesterday! Better grab your profits now!