Research In Motion today announced its Q2 fiscal 2012 financial results. Revenues for the quarter came in at US$4.2 billion, down 15% the previous quarter and down 10% compared to the same quarter a year ago. It shipped about 10.6 million BlackBerry smartphones and approximately 200,000 BlackBerry PlayBook tablets (compared to 500,000 units shipped in the previous quarter).
“We successfully launched a range of BlackBerry 7 smartphones around the world during the latter part of the second quarter and we are seeing strong sell-through and customer interest for these new products. Overall unit shipments in the quarter were slightly below our forecast due to lower than expected demand for older models,” said Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO at Research In Motion. “We will continue to build on the success of the BlackBerry 7 launch to drive the business as we focus our development efforts on delivering the next generation, QNX-based mobile platform next year.”
These numbers came up short against both RIM’s own forecasts but also those of many analysts, prompting a steep drop in the stock price after the announcement. RIM’s warning to expect more challenges in the near future did not help either. It now expects to barely meet the lower end of an already reduced full-year outlook.
On a more positive note, RIM saw its BlackBerry subscriber base grow 40% year over year to surpass 70 million.