RIM has faced a bumpy road recently; its market share in the face of stiff competition from the likes of Apple and Google and it has faced challenges getting new products launched. It today announced financial results for its first quarter for fiscal year 2012 and the news did little to suggest that the road ahead would be any smoother.
“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.” said Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO at Research In Motion. “RIM’s business is profitable and remains solid overall with growing market share in numerous markets around the world and a strong balance sheet with almost $3 billion in cash. We believe that with the new products scheduled for launch in the next few months and realigning our cost structure, RIM will see strong profit growth in the latter part of fiscal 2012.”
Revenues came in at US$4.9 billion, a drop of 12 percent over the previous quarter but up 16% over the same quarter a year ago. Net income for the quarter was US$695 million (also down from the previous quarter). It shipped 13.2 million BlackBerry smartphones and approximately 500,000 BlackBerry PlayBook tablets. It did not provide sell through numbers though.
The company also announced that there will be layoffs as it launches a program to “streamline operations across the organization.” It did not provide any further information though.
As widely expected, RIM also reduced its full year guidance to between US$5.25 and US$6.00 a share from US$7.50 a share expected less than two months ago.