Teh One Who Knocks
06-28-2012, 09:31 PM
Smartphone sales sink as net losses seen continuing
By Dan Gallagher, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Research In Motion Ltd. reported a sharp drop in sales for its fiscal first quarter on Thursday afternoon, and said it was pushing back the planned launch of its BlackBerry 10 operating system to early next year.
The sales decline and associated net loss for Research In Motion was worse than analysts had estimated, and the pushback of the BlackBerry 10 launch will also likely disappoint investors who had been expecting a fall launch of the new devices.
RIM shares tumbled more than 19% to $7.37 in late trading following the news.
“Over the past several weeks, RIM’s software development teams have made major progress in the development of key features for the BlackBerry 10 platform; however, the integration of these features and the associated large volume of code into the platform has proven to be more time consuming than anticipated,” the company said in a statement.
The BlackBerry 10 platform was widely seen as a last-ditch effort for the company to catch up to smartphone rivals such as the iPhone from Apple and devices using the Android operating system from Google. Apple is widely expected to launch the iPhone 5 by mid-October.
“I think it’s DOA,” Canaccord analyst Mike Walkley said of BlackBerry 10, given its now-delayed launch. “It’s too little, too late.”
RIM also said it is continuing to push its so-called “cost optimization” program that includes the layoffs of about 5,000 workers that is expected to be completed by the end of the current fiscal year.
For the quarter ended June 2, the company reported a net loss of $518 million, or 99 cents a share, compared with net income of $695 million, or $1.33 a share, for the same period last year.
Adjusted for a goodwill impairment charge, the company said it lost $192 million, or 37 cents a share, for the quarter.
Revenue slid by 43% to $2.8 billion for the quarter.
Analysts were expecting a net loss of 1 cent per share on revenue of $3.1 billion for the period, according to consensus forecasts from Thomson Reuters.
RIM said it shipped 7.8 million smartphones during the quarter — a sharp drop from the 13.2 million units shipped in the same period last year. The company said it shipped about 260,000 units of its PlayBook tablet.
The company said it ended the period with about 78 million subscribers, in line with a statement issued on May 29, which represents less than 1 million net additions to the subscriber base for the period.
By Dan Gallagher, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Research In Motion Ltd. reported a sharp drop in sales for its fiscal first quarter on Thursday afternoon, and said it was pushing back the planned launch of its BlackBerry 10 operating system to early next year.
The sales decline and associated net loss for Research In Motion was worse than analysts had estimated, and the pushback of the BlackBerry 10 launch will also likely disappoint investors who had been expecting a fall launch of the new devices.
RIM shares tumbled more than 19% to $7.37 in late trading following the news.
“Over the past several weeks, RIM’s software development teams have made major progress in the development of key features for the BlackBerry 10 platform; however, the integration of these features and the associated large volume of code into the platform has proven to be more time consuming than anticipated,” the company said in a statement.
The BlackBerry 10 platform was widely seen as a last-ditch effort for the company to catch up to smartphone rivals such as the iPhone from Apple and devices using the Android operating system from Google. Apple is widely expected to launch the iPhone 5 by mid-October.
“I think it’s DOA,” Canaccord analyst Mike Walkley said of BlackBerry 10, given its now-delayed launch. “It’s too little, too late.”
RIM also said it is continuing to push its so-called “cost optimization” program that includes the layoffs of about 5,000 workers that is expected to be completed by the end of the current fiscal year.
For the quarter ended June 2, the company reported a net loss of $518 million, or 99 cents a share, compared with net income of $695 million, or $1.33 a share, for the same period last year.
Adjusted for a goodwill impairment charge, the company said it lost $192 million, or 37 cents a share, for the quarter.
Revenue slid by 43% to $2.8 billion for the quarter.
Analysts were expecting a net loss of 1 cent per share on revenue of $3.1 billion for the period, according to consensus forecasts from Thomson Reuters.
RIM said it shipped 7.8 million smartphones during the quarter — a sharp drop from the 13.2 million units shipped in the same period last year. The company said it shipped about 260,000 units of its PlayBook tablet.
The company said it ended the period with about 78 million subscribers, in line with a statement issued on May 29, which represents less than 1 million net additions to the subscriber base for the period.