[Reed McLay]

RIM 1Q profit and sales more than double, shares falter - Forbes.com

TORONTO - Smart phone maker Research In Motion Ltd reported Wednesday that its fiscal first-quarter profit and revenue more than doubled, fueled by strong sales of its BlackBerry devices.

...

For the three months that ended May 31, the Canadian company said it earned $482.5 million, or 84 cents per share, up from $223.2 million, or 39 cents per share, in the same period a year earlier. All figures are in U.S. currency.

RIM said its revenue jumped to $2.24 billion from $1.08 billion a year earlier.

"We are pleased to report another record quarter with revenue increasing 107 percent as the popularity of the BlackBerry platform continued to spread in business, government and consumer segments," said RIM Co-chief Executive Officer Jim Balsillie during a press conference Wednesday afternoon.

The company said it added 2.3 million net new BlackBerry subscribers in the quarter, six percent higher than in the fourth quarter, to bring the total to subscriber base to over 16 million. RIM also shipped about 5.4 million devices in Q1.

"Our comprehensive technology and business strategies continue to reap strong results in the market, and RIM is well positioned to build on its momentum throughout the remainder of fiscal 2009."

...
RIM expects its revenue in the second quarter, which ends Aug. 31, to be in the range of $2.55 billion to $2.65 billion and earnings per share are expected to be in the range of 84 cents to 89 cents per diluted share.

"We believe that the strong product portfolio we have, together with the continued commitment by our carrier partners to promote BlackBerry throughout the summer months, will allow us to post healthy growth in Q2," Balsillie said in a call with analysts.

Misek predicted "thunderous" for the second quarter, when the company's Kickstart flip phone is to launch.

RIM's positive outlook for the second quarter is also buoyed by the planned launch in August of the BlackBerry Bold, a touch-screen device that some analysts have suggested RIM developed in response to Apple Inc.'s iPhone.

....
During the call, Balsillie told investors and analysts that RIM's market share around the world and particularly in the U.S., U.K. and Latin America continued to grow.

In first quarter, he said, its share of the U.S. market "increased substantially and was more than double that of our nearest competitor, whose share decreased significantly from the prior quarter."

...

Right on, 16 Million addicts.

[Reed McLay]

... analysts praised RIM's plan to sacrifice short-term profit for investment in product development and marketing, and said the company will reap long-term benefits from moves such as launching TV advertising campaigns, hiring more staff and upgrading and expanding its network technology.

"Our view is that RIM is investing to capitalize on the unique growth opportunities here and now: increasing consumer adoption of smartphones, juicy carrier subsidies, and limited (albeit increasing) competition," Citi Investment Research analyst Jim Suva wrote in a note to clients.

"We think RIM made the tough decision to forgo short-term profit for longer-term growth."

Investors, however, appeared very much focused on the present as RIM's shares dropped C$17.40, or 12.1 percent to 126.60 on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Thursday morning. On the Nasdaq, they fell $17.01 to $125.33.

...

A stratigic move in a Global chess match.

[Raptor007]

And the analysts punish them for missing it by $.01

[Pete6]

RIM is doing the right thing in "We think RIM made the tough decision to forgo short-term profit for longer-term growth." They just picked a bad time to do it with the iPhone hitting the market as it did.

RIM now has 16 Million users as Stoner pointsout. Crackberry has 200K. It is pretty obvious why RIM is uninterested in a few Crackheads. We are less than a pimple.

[Berryman]

RIM is due to ship their 40 millionth device. To put this figure in perspective, Nokia currently sells 400 million phones a year

Yes I know, a high percentage of Nokia phone sales are not smart phones, but these sales figures do highlight that there is much market share for RIM still to grab.

"Approximately 5.4m devices were shipped in Q1 with 2.3 million net new BlackBerry subscriber accounts added taking the total worldwide BlackBerry subscriber account base to over 16 million"

[Raptor007]

We are the registered users but there are so many lurkers around the world. RIM is as others have said getting more into the consumer side of things. If they truly want to grow and maintain their existing BES/BIS clients then they need to pay closer attention to QOS, customers needs and OS updates that go around the carriers.