RIM has pushed back the release of the first smartphone running BlackBerry 10 until early 2013. This will have a negative impact on the company's efforts to turn itself around.
Previously, the launch of the next BlackBerry was scheduled for this fall. That was until Thorsten Heins, RIM's President and CEO, revealed in his company's latest earnings report that, "Our top priority going forward is the successful launch of our first BlackBerry 10 device, which we now anticipate will occur in the first quarter of calendar 2013."
Over the last few quarters, RIM has seen falling sales of its devices. Its BlackBerry operating system was seen by potential customers as beeing out of date compared to the Apple iPhone. That's why the company has put all its efforts into the development of BlackBerry 10, which has been re-built from the ground up.
However, this can't contribute to RIM's bottom line until devices running it are on store shelves. And that's not going to happen during the critical holiday shopping season this year.
Heins did not give specific reasons for the delay, just saying, "I will not deliver a product to the market that is not ready to meet the needs of our customers. There will be no compromise on this issue."
Financial Results
The results of RIM's most recent financial quarter highlight its problems. During the March-May period, it lost $518 million. It lost $125 million in the previous quarter.
The company took in $2.8 billion, down 33% from the previous quarter and down 43% from the same quarter of last year. During the quarter, RIM shipped (but did not necessarily sell) 7.8 million BlackBerry smartphones and approximately 260,000 BlackBerry PlayBook tablets.
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