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Ba Ba Balckberry, Where Have You Been?
By siliconindia
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Monday, 19 December 2011, 16:04 IST
Bangalore: The year 2011 has not been a pleasant year and December seems to get worse for Blackberry manufacturer,RIM after the quarterly results were announced. RIMs reported quarter earnings were way too surprising and disappointing as it not meet the anticipated results. The real killer of all was the quarter on quarter sales of Blackberry smartphones which had a huge dip from the previous quarter. With discouraging results, RIM also announced that its CEOs will comprise on their remuneration to acknowledge the losses that has been incurred by investors.
The overall revenue expected was $5.27 billion whereas RIM hit only $5.2 billion. The stock price went down sliding by 11.2 percent. But the Earnings per Share (EPS) came out a little stronger than what was expected, $1.27 versus $1.20.
"Despite the challenges faced in the third quarter, the BlackBerry subscriber base grew to almost 75 million customers around the world. In addition, RIM launched a range of new BlackBerry 7 based smartphones globally and introduced holiday promotions that helped drive growth in the installed base of BlackBerry PlayBook users," said Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, Co-CEOs at Research In Motion.
The crucial holiday season was no magic wand for Blackberry smartphones. The sales of an interim line of legacy BlackBerry 7 smartphones was gloomy and did not do much on earnings. Even though RIM claims that the shipments were highest this year during the Christmas season, its annual sales numbers is the lowest in the history of RIM.
RIM reminds me of a beloved grandparent. You love them, but they are very outdated and sooner or later they will be gone," said independent analyst Jeff Kagan in an email.
Making things worse, RIM gave the bad news that the 10 smartphones which will define RIMs future will be out only in the end of 2012. A stream of bad news concreted upon RIM has driven its shares to their lowest since early 2004, and it has led to analyst and investor demands for Balsillie and Lazaridis to step down.
Revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2012 ending March 3, 2012 is expected to be in the range of $4.6-$4.9 billion. Gross margin percentage for the fourth quarter is expected to be approximately 38 percent BlackBerry smartphone shipments are expected to be between 11 million and 12 million units. Earnings per share for the fourth quarter is expected to be in the range of $0.80-$0.95 as mentioned in the Press release of RIM.