When it rains, it pours. And in RIM’s case, it turns into a Noah-style
biblical flood. Bloomberg News, via The Financial Post, reports that the
troubled BlackBerry maker is now facing pressure from mobile carriers
to slash the fees it charges them in exchange for giving their wireless
subscribers access to RIM’s BlackBerry server infrastructure. The
carrier fees generate more than $4 billion in annual revenue for RIM,
meaning the firm could soon be taking a hit in one of its major sources
of revenues. Northern Securities analyst Sameet Kanade told Bloomberg
that ”revenue from the monthly fee could drop 17% to $3.4 billion this
year and another 18% to $2.8 billion in fiscal 2014 as carriers such as
AT&T and Verizon Wireless seek lower fees amid the company’s
diminishing clout.”