Research in Motion delivered a blow to high flying Apple, announcing it shipped 14.2 million BlackBerry smartphones in its recent quarter, beating Apple which shipped 14.1 million.
The company surpassed analyst expectations in both profits and shipments, in a welcome bit of good news for a company that has been losing market share in smartphones to competitors like Apple.
RIM’s revenue for its fiscal Q3 was $5.49 billion, up 40 percent from the same quarter of last year. Net income was $911.1 million, up from $628.4 million last year.
RIM’s stock jumped about 2 percent on the news, said Fierce Wireless. But not all is rosy for RIM.
While worldwide shipments are up, U.S. shipments have been in decline for a year and fell 16 percent this recent quarter, reports The Wall Street Journal citing GMP Securities. The sluggish U.S. sales occurred despite the launch of the Torch using a completely new OS.
Also, while RIM shipped 14.2 million BlackBerrys, wireless carriers only sold thorugh 12.3 million.
Then again, on the plus side RIM is about to introduce a new PlayBook tablet and it will start making use of a new QNX operating system. And it offered fiscal Q4 guidance to sell 15 million BlackBerrys, indicating it is not worried about oversupply in the channel.
Source: Fierce Wireless, The Wall Street Journal