As Apple Goes Up, Research in Motion Goes Down

Coincidence or scientific proof that people are trading in their BlackBerry's for iPhones? Over the last six month, Apple's AAPL success has had an inverse affect on Research in Motion RIMM. While this might not come as a surprise to the million people who have pre-ordered the iPhone 4S, there was a time – not too long ago, in fact – when Research in Motion was a thriving company. But as you can see from the chart below, the BlackBerry maker has been dropping much faster than Apple is growing. (Apple is in blue, RIM is in red.)

Chart from Google Finance This suggests that Apple isn't the sole cause of RIM's problems. Google GOOG Android could be a significant factor as well. However, I suspect it's even worse than that. I'm betting that, in addition to the customers Apple and Google physically stole from RIM, there are several customers who were going to leave the brand anyway. This is essentially what has happened to Nokia NOK. When is the last time you met someone that had a Nokia phone? Soon, you'll be asking yourself that question about RIM. While RIM execs may have lost confidence in the brand (all the while making foolish announcements that won't carry the firm to victory), BlackBerry is still a fairly strong brand. Not even a worldwide outage will kill off the ailing phones. Not yet, at least. Going forward, however, things aren't looking good for RIM. When Google chose to acquire one of its dying competitors, it could have easily looked for a company with a strong brand of phones. Instead, Google chose Motorola MMI, the once-great phone, cable box and random device manufacturer. Granted, RIM wouldn't come packaged with the same quality of patents that Motorola provided. RIM wouldn't have come with a way for Google to enter the cable box market. It does, however, currently manufacture a more popular line of phones. But we know how fickle popularity can be, right? Follow me @LouisBedigian