Behind RIM’s $485M Write-off

This contains a very disturbing question about RIM’s accounting practices. Jean-Louis is being careful to insulate himself from lawsuits by phrasing his suggestion as a question, but the implication is that either he is mistaken about what RIM have claimed or that their numbers—especially previous revenues—don’t add up.<p>If RIM has been super-aggressive about their numbers in the past, this could be the crack in the dam that leads to a complete collapse. A one-mighty company with declining prospects that engages in questionable accounting practices to delay the revelation of exactly how poorly they are doing...<p>This is an oft-repeated tale in the public markets, and it always transitions from drama through horror to pathos.

On the plus side for Canadian startups: It looks like there will be a glut of highly-competent engineers on the market in the next year or two as RIM sheds staff. Waterloo is looking like a lucrative place to launch a startup.

Side note: I had no idea that Jean-Louis Gassée was writing financial stuff like this. I always wondered what he wound up doing after Apple and Be.

I am not sure where the scandal is here. Playbooks were selling for $499 in Q1 and Q2, and that was for the basic model. Now they get marked down to $199, so the $485M writedown represents about 1.5-1.6 million Playbooks written down by $300 a piece.<p>This is an inventory writedown so probably RIM ordered from the manufacturer way more Playbooks than they actually ended up selling (no news here) and whatever inventory was in the "warehouses" so to speak got written down.

"Still, RIM only reported a total of 700,000 tablets “sold” for the Q1 and Q2, <i>they can’t have all been returned</i> and massive returns would have been disclosed previously, one hopes."<p>Reading the reviews about the lack of basic functionality, like email, it's possible they could almost all be returned.<p>The bigger question is, and it's been posed <i>here</i> for more than a year, is why is the same leadership there? That this is <i>now</i> just being discussed in analyst assessments in mind boggling.<p>It's also possible that the 2.4-4.8 million figure makes sense in MBA land. 2.4 million could have been the minimum order number to get the per-unit build cost down to ~$200 which would have provided enough head room for whatever the going rate is for one of these things. I've seen crazier justifications for ridiculous business strategies put forth.