RIM Now Worth Less Than Apple’s App Store

RIM Now Worth Less Than Apple’s App Store

Research in Motion’s performance in the smartphone market has been so bad, that its stock price is now valued at less than the value of Apple’s App Store alone.

Blackberry PlayBookRecent announcements about the poor sales performance of their PlayBook tablet, and a delay in the next version of their smartphone operating system, have seen RIM’s stock finishing last week with a total value of just $7.04 billion, says AppleInsider. That’s a price of $13.44 per share. Their total value is less than the $7.08 billion that Apple’s App Store is estimated to be worth.

AppleInsider reports:

An analysis from Trefis places the value of the App Store at 2 percent of Apple’s market cap. AAPL stock has a market cap of $354 billion, or more than 50 times greater than RIMM, and 2 percent of that means the App Store contributes $7.08 billion to Apple’s market cap.

‘The App Store is probably worth more than BlackBerry,’ Hall wrote. ‘All of BlackBerry. Just the App Store. Nothing else. Not the iPhone or iPod. Not Mac. Just the App Store.’

RIM has seen their stock plummet since the company announced last week that BlackBerry shipments saw a slight decline year over year, and that the company had managed to sell only 150,000 PlayBook tablets last quarter.

RIM has also announced that their next smartphone OS, BlackBerry 10, has been delayed until the second half of 2012. Some analysts have wondered if the new platform will be a case of too little, too late.

It’s been reported that Apple’s iTunes and App Stores cost as much as $1.3 billion a year to operate. Apple has long maintained that they make little profit from the stores.