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Research in Motion jumped on the phone today to answer questions investors have about the struggling company. What will be the fate of our beloved BlackBerry maker? Hit the break to read a quick recap of most all that went on during today’s earnings call with Co-CEO’s Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie.
500,000 PlayBooks Shipped
RIM has reported that they had shipped 500,000 units of the Blackberry PlayBook tablet within the first 6 weeks of the tablet’s launch. This far exceeded the average analyst expectation of 366,000 units for the first two month after launch. Regardless of the PlayBook’s success, that success is being measured relatively as it is no where near the sales of the original iPad which had shipped 2 million units within the first 2 months of launch.
4G BlackBerry PlayBook Still on Schedule
Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis had confirmed today that their target of “Fall 2011” for the 4G BlackBerry PlayBook are still unchanged and they anticipate huge support behind their device. This is good news for RIM, but they failed to acknowledge the immense amount of R&D they are pouring into the 4G PlayBook and how it is affecting the launch dates of their OS 7 devices.
QNX OS to BlackBerry Handhelds
It was also confirmed that there was no change in the QNX phones coming out in early 2012, Co-CEO mike Lazaridis confirmed. When questions arose regarding the integrity of their OS 7 products Lazaridis insisted that the OS 7 phones were going to be marketed as lower priced messaging phones and could not be compared with the higher end QNX platform that will launch on handhelds in 2012.
Co-CEO For Life?
Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis have been with RIM since the very beginning. Over the past several years and have amassed “$20 billion in annual revenue and has successfully navigated through many challenging times.”
This is certainly not the first time RIM has seen such a difficulty and it probably won’t be the last. But never before has RIM seen their shares in the $30 range since 2006 – the early days of the smartphone surge. RIM has seen an all-time high of $144.52 per share and are now trading roughly 4-times below that high.
The two CEO’s argue that they have almost sailed around the storm and have done a great job limiting the damages. They insisted that OS 7 and QNX will save the company. Yet with this fight, there will be casualties. The focus now shifts largely on the two and how they will excute their promises.
RIM is Shrinking – In More Than One Way
Fueling the fire and adding to the losses the company has seen in 2011. After falling 14.6% during after hours trading and missing on revenue for the quarter the company announced it will undergo a corporate restructuring. RIM hopes to reassess the strengths and weaknesses of it’s current business growth plan.
Slashing Revenue for Q2 2012
On top of the slew of bad news that arose from today’s call, RIM announced that they are slashing their projected revenue yet again. RIM projected that next quarter’s sales will be $4.2 billion to $4.8 billion. Analysts’ previous estimates: $5.46 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported.