Research in Motion may have tried to use REO Speedwagon to help promote BlackBerry 10 this week to app developers, but the company had to face the ugly truth today that it is still losing money. The company revealed that for its last fiscal quarter, it recorded a loss of $235 million, compared to a profit of $329 million for the same period a year ago.
Revenue for the quarter, which ended on September 1st, came in at $2.9 billion. However, those numbers actually were better than expected - financial analysts were predicting that RIM would only have $2.5 billion in revenue. That caused the company's stock price to go up in after hours trading today.
RIM said it shipped just 7.4 million BlackBerry smartphones during the last quarter, along with a tiny shipment of 130,000 Blackberry Playbook tablets (shipping numbers are not the same as the number of units that are actually sold). On the plus side, the subscriber base for BlackBerry devices increased to 80 million users worldwide.
News.com reports that, during the analyst Q&A that followed RIM's financial results, company CEO Thorsten Heins said that the launch of BlackBerry 10, due in the first quarter of 2013, will at first target mid and high end consumers and businesses. However, he added, "We're working on a concept for the entry level. You might see a product in the entry level by next year."
Source: RIM press release | Image via RIM
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