QUOTED: a Toronto tech watcher, on the RIM catastrophe that would flummox even Steve Jobs

—Kerry Morrison, of Toronto software developer Endloop Mobile, on the general pessimism about Research in Motion’s future, which looks bleak enough to lick even the late Apple visionary. With yesterday’s announcement that the launch of the BlackBerry 10 has been put off—yet again—things are as bad as they have ever been. The BlackBerry 10, RIM’s utterly crucial next-generation smart phone, now won’t be released until 2013, meaning it will both miss the back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons and be forced to square off against a shiny new iteration of the iPhone. On other fronts, the news is just as grim: the company is axing nearly a third of its global work force, and for the first time in eight years, RIM is reporting a net loss, of about $518 million (U.S.). While some analyses are verging on the histrionic (one analyst wrote, “It’s like watching a puppy die”), chances of a comeback do seem pretty slim at this point. [Globe and Mail]