BlackBerry the company formerly known as RIM have posted their quarterly earning reports and the things surely don’t look good for the once glorious handset maker.
BlackBerry was betting high on their latest line of smartphones running the latest BlackBerry 10 operating system but it seems the bet hasn’t quite worked out in their favour as Blackberry shipped 6.8 million smartphones out of which only 2.7 million of them were BlackBerry 10 devices. The company posted operating loss of $84 million which was quite unexpected and revenue was $3.07 billion, that is 15 percent better than the $2.8 billion for the same quarter last year.
The BlackBerry PlayBook sold only a 100,000 units and BlackBerry announced that the Tablet won’t be getting the BlackBerry 10 update which was promised thus killing any Tablet plans for the future and also killing the PlayBook on the way.
The most disappointing thing of all is the low sales of BlackBerry 10 handsets considering the response they got. One of the reasons could be the sale of only one device properly that is the Z10 while the Q10 went on sale only this month but still the 2.7 million number is disappointing and hurts BlackBerry’s plans badly.
The market reacted with disappointment on the news as the shares plummeted by over 20 %.
The company’s CEO Thorsten Heins who has always been showing a brave outlook warned the investors that the next Quarter could bring further losses but asked time for BlackBerry 10 to grow and prove itself.
Once one of the leaders in the smartphone market and now in a very critical stage, people are already predicting the death of BlackBerry but we will have to wait and watch as the things unfold and if BlackBerry can turn things around as we all know a renaissance always takes time, long time. In any case it will be quite saddening if the once glorious company has to go into oblivion. Here’s hoping they bounce back. What do you think, can they overcome this stage?
