RIM ended last year with 77 million BlackBerry subscribers, $18.4 billion in revenue (down 7% from fiscal 2011) and total shipments of their PlayBook tablet reached 1,350,000. It’s known that they’re in the midst of a massive transition and all employees are solely focussed on delivering thier upcoming BlackBerry 10 OS and BlackBerry 10 devices.
Today, RIM announced their Q1 Fiscal 2013 results and, as expected, not so good. Revenues were $2.8 billion, down a whopping 33% from the previous quarter ($4.2 billion), plus they reported an operating loss of $518 million. Shocking. RIM did manage to ship 7.8 million BlackBerry smartphone and also shipped approximately 260,000 PlayBooks.
Unfortunately, the report noted that the BlackBerry 10 smartphone launch is “now scheduled for Q1 of calendar 2013.” Curious about the reason? Well, it comes down to coding. RIM said their “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.”
In addition, more news was given about the ongoing layoffs. It was expected that they would total between 2,000 – 4,000, but today they announced that due to “increasingly competitive environment” 5,000 jobs will be cut as part of a “workforce reduction” strategy. Total savings will be about $1 billion.
Other notable takeaways from their results:
– They’ll streamlining the supply chain and consolidating the “manufacturing footprint from 10 external manufacturing sites to three.”
– Outsourcing parts of their Global Repair operations, including management of device level repairs
– Hired Steve Zipperstein as its Chief Legal Officer (former General Counsel of Verizon).
Thorsten Heins, President and CEO, said “Our first quarter results reflect the market challenges I have outlined since my appointment as CEO at the end of January. I am not satisfied with these results and continue to work aggressively with all areas of the organization and the Board to implement meaningful changes to address the challenges, including a thoughtful realignment of resources and honing focus within the Company on areas that have the greatest opportunities. Our top priority going forward is the successful launch of our first BlackBerry 10 device, which we now anticipate will occur in the first quarter of calendar 2013. In parallel with the roll out of BlackBerry 10, we are aggressively working with our advisors on our strategic review and are actively evaluating ways to better leverage our assets and build on our strengths, including our growing BlackBerry subscriber base of approximately 78 million, our large enterprise installed base, our unique network architecture and our industry leading security capabilities.”
Source: MarketWire
MobileSyrup may earn a commission from purchases made via our links, which helps fund the journalism we provide free on our website. These links do not influence our editorial content. Support us here.
