Toronto, May 10 (IANS) With its PlayBook tablet showing modest sales and BlackBerry smart phone sales slowing, Research In Motion (RIM) was Monday downgraded by a top Canadian capital markets group.
On a day when RIM stock further slipped by more than two percent to close at $45, capital markets research leader Canaccord Genuity said the Canadian wireless giant continued to suffer share loss in the high-end North America smart phone market in April.
Even RIM's overseas smart phones sales were also slackening, it said.
As a result, Canaccord Genuity - which is a capital market division of Canaccord Financial Inc.- said it is lowering its price target for RIM by $12 to $49.
Canaccord analyst T. Michael Walkley, in his note to his clients Monday, wrote, "Our North American channel checks indicated soft BlackBerry sales and high-end share losses to the iPhone and Android smart phones at AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile."
According to the note, "Further, our global checks indicated slowing (BlackBerry) Torch sales versus ramping Android sales in Western Europe, and slowing global Curve 8520 sales versus both low-end Android smart phones and aggressively priced Nokia products."
Though at its BlackBerry World annual conference in Florida last week RIM unveiled new thinner smart phones and announced to update its aging smart phone line-up with a new BlackBerry operating system, the analyst said he saw no immediate sales recovery by RIM as the new devices wouldn't be hitting the market soon this summer.
He said 2011 would be "a challenging" year for Canada's top technology as its much-vaunted PlayBook tablet has posted only 'modest' sales into its third week of launch.
Investors are abandoning RIM stock since April 28 when the BlackBerry maker lowered its quarterly outlook on dipping sales in the high-end smart phone market. The stock sank more than $14 a day after the announcement.
At $45.01 Monday, RIM stock is less than a third of of its top value of $150 in June 2008 before the start of the global meltdown.
The Canadian company has a current market value of about $25 billion as compared to over $300 billion for Apple.