2012 did not start Research in Motion off on the right foot, and it certainly doesn’t look to improve anytime soon. We posted earlier that analysts expected RIM to report a loss (which, admittedly, most anyone could have probably predicted). RIM has just reported the hard numbers.
For the first quarter of its 2013 fiscal year, the company made $2.8 billion in revenue, down a full 33 percent from the fourth quarter of 2011. In addition, it reported a net loss of $518 million — much worse than the aforementioned analysts were expecting. As if that weren’t disheartening enough, the company has also announced that it’s cutting an additional 5,000 jobs as part of its ongoing restructuring efforts.
In terms of its existing devices, RIM reported that BlackBerry smartphone shipments (not sales) for the quarter totaled 7.8 million, in addition to 260,000 PlayBook devices shipped. The total BlackBerry subscriber base now stands at 78 million.
Not surprisingly, the company foretells of more bad news to come. It expects the “next several quarters to continue to be very challenging,” with everything from the “increasing competitive environment,” lower handset volumes, impact from the BlackBerry 10 delay, and the company’s plans to “continue to aggressively drive sales of BlackBerry 7 handheld devices,” which is expected to cut into the company’s pocket book.