RIM Niagara or Viagra?

Research in Motion Ltd. took the wraps off its anticipated BlackBerry App World this week, but let me quote my man Jay Z: RIM’s got 99 problems and an app ain’t one, so to speak.

Oh alright, lest I get completely flamed (thanks, by the way, for whoever called me a “moron” last week – that was awesome) let me say, maybe it’s not 99 problems, but definitely one or two, starting with the fact that RIM is suffering a lack of mojo.

It’s not enough that BlackBerry was once the CrackBerry – it’s facing a now-ascendant iPhone,a big buzz for the upcoming Palm Pre, the fact that Microsoft’s turning the mobility dial up to 11 ... plus all those pesky netbooks that seem to be striking a cord with consumers and road warriors alike. BlackBerry is facing a lot of competition, put simply.

But it’s deeper than that.

It’s going to take more than the spinning of the App World to bring BlackBerry back from the debacle of the Storm, which proved more a tornado than a warming spring shower for BlackBerry’s cache. The first touchscreen BlackBerry is truly very sleek – but had the misfortune of arriving smack in the middle of a rash of new touchscreen devices, standing out only because it was buggy and managed to draw a scathing and widely circulated review in the New York Times. Oh happy day. Not.

Then there’s the iPhone problem. After a Canalys report found that Apple could crow about a 17.3 percent market share in the worldwide smartphone market (second only to Nokia), the fact that BlackBerry was relegated to No. 3 with about 15 percent was the subject of much breathless blogging and commentary. And Gartner Inc. countered that the iPhone counts for less than 2 percent of all cellular handsets en toto, but even that worked in Apple’s favor when AdMob came out and said the device counts for a third of worldwide mobile Web browsing traffic and a full 50 percent inside the U.S. – that’s a lot of Web browsing by a small sliver of the population. Is that “We Are the Champions” playing in the background? Maybe “Another One Bites the Dust”? Regardless of choice of Queen anthem, Apple’s attitude can be summed up as: “We so totally rock.”

Then there’s the feeling that despite earning nearly $400 million last quarter, RIM’s losing favor with Wall Street, even to the point of analysts liking the cut of Palm’s jib just a bit better – Palm having lost $100 million in that same quarter, I must point out.

Here’s some Pre love and RIM trash talk from stock analysts last week:

"Since their earnings release last week, we have conducted a round of checks on Palm and remain confident in the potential for their new Pre smartphone to turn around the company's results," said Chris Whitmore of Deutsche Bank.

Shaw Wu of Kaufman Bros. said recent declines in profit margins at RIM are a concern – which are the result of the R&D spent to design and launch the touchscreen BlackBerry Storm and other models designed to compete with the iPhone but not making good. Ouch.

RIM "is already operating close to its peak earnings power," said Ehud Gelblum of J.P. Morgan. "With enterprise net adds falling victim to rising levels of unemployment, this places the burden of growth solely on the consumer side where we believe replacement rates should decline with the overall handset market and as the company pushes more into international where replacement rates are significantly lower than in the U.S."

But ... but what about the big U2 tie-in? That’s cool, right?

So what’s a maker of still-popular, still-revenue-generating devices to do? Well, the opportunity to add third-party apps might indeed put BlackBerry more in the spotlight and capable of gobbling up consumer hearts and minds in upcoming weeks. And, the BlackBerry Niagara seems to be gaining buzz as the best BlackBerry, like, EVER. Maybe it can wash away that Storm taint and prove to be just what RIM needs to get its mojo back. Niagara, BlackBerry’s Viagra – that’s a convenient rhyme, a convenient metaphor, dear readers, and may or may not prove to be true.