RIM Targets Business, Readies New Platform - oharafeelitere

Revenue continues to shrink at Research In Motion, and the company rumored a loss for the fourth quarter as it struggles to stay germane ahead launching a new smartphone platform.

On Thursday, the society reported results for its fiscal fourth quarter ended March 3. It also announced additional personnel changes, including that Jim Balsillie, previous co-CEO of the troupe, has granted ascending his board seat. Balsillie and company founder Jim Lazaridis lately handed over their positions as co-CEOs to Thorsten Heins, WHO had been chief operational officer.

For RIM's fourth quarter, revenue dropped 25 percent from the previous year to US$4.2 one thousand million. The company recorded a net red of $125 million, or $0.24 per diluted partake.

Analysts were expecting just slightly punter revenue. Those polled by Thomson Financial thought tax revenue would reach $4.54 one thousand million.

Shipments Shrink

RIM shipped 11.1 million phones in the fourth billet, 21 percent fewer than in the third quarter. It also shipped 500,000 PlayBook tablets. That's up from just 150,000 in the third canton. The keep company has sold-out a total of 1.3 jillio tablets, it said.

In his first earnings call since atomic number 2 took over as CEO, Heins same he has a different view of the company right away that he's spent ten weeks poring over it. "The impression I had at Clarence Day two of being CEO is now pretty different from the facts I know after existence CEO for ten weeks," he said on the call. After he first took over, his comments were largely supportive of the company's present strategies, but he has now announced plans to realize a number of changes.

One decision he's made over those x weeks of studying the company is that he will focus on enterprise customers, he said. "We plan to refocus happening the enterprise business and capitalize happening our leadership position therein section. Brim was later to the BYOD movement and we saw a significant slowing down in our endeavor subscriber growth pace as a solution," he said. BYOD refers to the "bring your personal device" trend, where workers are allowed to choose their own phones to connect to business applications.

Simultaneously, RIM wants to put on its forthcoming BlackBerry 10 platform to appeal to each segments, including consumers. "That doesn't mean we have to do it alone," helium said. "Whether it way we'll habitus computer hardware or whether we prosecute in other partnerships is on the nose part of the strategic revaluation," helium said. That means the company is considering licensing its software to other computer hardware makers, if that option makes sense as part of a plan of action evaluation of the accompany that Heins is undertaking.

RIM will keep making high-end devices itself, he said. "I want the RIM device to be a swollen-end object of desire," he aforementioned.

Heins also expects to pare some of the company's services offerings aimed at consumers, although he didn't specify which. "We're looking ways to scale stake these activities and refocus on our integrated services oblation" that leverages RIM strengths such as the BBM service, its security offerings and management products, he said. BBM is RIM's popular instant electronic messaging service.

Product Priorities

At to the lowest degree until Blackberry bush 10 comes out, RIM will continue to focus on on entry-level products, particularly outside of North America, where it has already sold more than 40 million of its entry-level Curve phones. Information technology reportable that 68 percent of total revenue came from extraneous of the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

RIM will also introduce some new BlackBerry 7 phones, including entry-level models, and initiate programs to essay to promote sales. Those efforts are aimed at trying to sustain gross revenue before the launch of the first Blackberry bush 10 phone after this year.

The company continues to only vaguely say that information technology will have the phones based on the new chopine in the "latter part of this year." It has blessed the delay on a conclusion to use a to a greater extent advanced chipset that won't be available until the middle of the year. Flange will offer prototype devices to developers during its annual BlackBerry World event in May to help them bod apps that will be available at the launch of the phone. Heins said the company plans to have phones for carriers to follow-up primordial in the summer, with shipments coming later in the year.

The company has decided to stop offering counseling on in store whole shipments, revenue and earnings. Information technology generally warned, however, that it expects continuing downward pressure on earnings throughout the year.

Brim also announced additional leadership changes. David Yach, who has been CTO of software for the company for 13 years, is retiring. Jim Sorbus aucuparia, chief operational officer of global operations, who has been with the company for four eld, is departure to quest for other interests. RIM said IT is searching for a new COO to run the entire company's operations.

Nancy Gohring covers mobile phones and cloud computing for The IDG News Divine service. Succeed Nancy on Twitter at @idgnancy. Nancy's e-mail savoir-faire is Nancy_Gohring@idg.com

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/469536/rim_targets_business_readies_new_platform.html

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