Research In Motion today announced its Q3 results for fiscal year 2012. Revenues came in at US$5.2 billion, up 24% from US$4.2 billion in the previous quarter but down 6% from US$5.5 billion in the same quarter of last year. It shipped 14.1 million BlackBerry smartphones (meeting its revised Q3 guidance), up 33% from the previous quarter, and 150,000 BlackBerry PlayBook tablets. Its subscriber base grew 35% year-over-year to almost 75 million.
“Despite the challenges faced in the third quarter, the BlackBerry subscriber base grew to almost 75 million customers around the world. In addition, RIM launched a range of new BlackBerry 7 based smartphones globally and introduced holiday promotions that helped drive growth in the installed base of BlackBerry PlayBook users,” said Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, Co-CEOs at Research In Motion. “RIM continues to have strong technology, unique service capabilities and a large installed base of customers, and we are more determined than ever to capitalize on our strengths to overcome the recent execution challenges surrounding product launches and the resulting financial performance. As part of our commitment to improving our performance to better meet the expectations of shareholders and customers, we continue to evaluate ways to improve in several areas of the Company’s operations. It may take some time to realize the benefits of these
efforts and the platform transition that we are undertaking, but we continue to believe that RIM has the right set of strengths and capabilities to maintain a leading role in the mobile communications industry.”
RIM does not expect things to get much better in Q4. Its outlook calls for shipments of BlackBerry smartphones to fall between 11 and 12 million and revenues to fall in the US$4.6 to US4.9 billion range. There was no mention of expected PlayBook shipments in Q4 in its press release.