RIM’s continued slowdown was laid bare in the company’s quarterly earnings call yesterday, where the Canadian smartphone maker dished out their latest figures, which included lower-than-expected revenue, and bad news for those looking for a 4G Playbook.
RIM only dealt with shipments of their devices, not actual sales – so while the firm say they’ve shipped 500,000 Playbooks to date, its impossible to know how many of those made it into the hands of consumers, and how many are languishing unsold in warehouses. That figure did beat forecasts though – analysts were expecting only 400,000 devices to be shipped.
Although the company still produced $695 million in profit, their year-on-year earnings were down 16%. RIM themselves had forecast shipments of 13.5-14.5 million handsets, but only managed to ship 13.2 million units.
In response to the dwindling demand for Blackberry products, RIM has said they will introduce cost-cutting measures including layoffs and a share buy-back. Unfortunately, RIM predicts the slowdown will only get worse in the next quarter. Co-CEO Jim Balsillie said –
“Fiscal 2012 has gotten off to a challenging start. The slowdown we saw in the first quarter is continuing into Q2, and delays in new product introductions into the very late part of August is leading to a lower than expected outlook in the second quarter.”
That delayed product he’s referring to is the 4G version of the Playbook tablet, which has been pushed back to the autumn.
RIM’s other co-CEO, Mike Lazaridis, tried to brighten the mood a bit, pointing to forthcoming updates to the Playbook software – which was widely criticised for lacking several key features at launch – and the Android player as key launches that should help bolster the Blackberry offering.
