As BlackBerry steers its ship to hopefully happier seas, the smartphone maker is struggling to gain momentum. In its first quarterly earnings report since changing its name from Research In Motion to BlackBerry, the Canadian company announced stagnant earnings on the strength of six million smartphones shipped and 370,000 BlackBerry PlayBook tablets. Total revenue was $2.7 billion, down about 2% from the previous quarter and 46% (from $4.2 billion) from the same quarter a year ago.
BlackBerry said it shipped one million BlackBerry 10 devices in the quarter. All things considered, that is not bad. The Canadian fiscal quarter ended March 2. The BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 (which is not yet available) were announced on January 30 and did not shipping to its first round of countries (Canada, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates) for more than a week afterwards. BlackBerry has been expanding its roster of countries where the BlackBerry is shipping through the end of February and into March. The United States has finally seeing the touchscreen BlackBerry Z10 to major carriers within the past week.
BlackBerry’s revenue was generated 61% from hardware, 36% for services and 3% for software and other revenue. Services for BlackBerry include many of its enterprise and government services, such as the BlackBerry Enterprise Server.
“We have implemented numerous changes at BlackBerry over the past year and those changes have resulted in the Company returning to profitability in the fourth quarter,” said Thorsten Heins, President and CEO. “With the launch of BlackBerry 10, we have introduced the newest and what we believe to be the most innovative mobile computing platform in the market today. Customers love the device and the user experience, and our teams and partners are now focused on getting those devices into the hands of BlackBerry consumer and enterprise customers.”
While the quarterly earnings from BlackBerry are not outstanding, it should be noted that the company does not appear to be hemorrhaging money any longer. BlackBerry actually made $94 million in profit this quarter. That can be a little deceptive as BlackBerry has gone through massive layoffs and reorganization, but it seems that CEO Thorsten Heins has the company running lean and, for the first time in a long time, shipping actual products and generating buzz.
BlackBerry also announced that its co-founder Mike Lazaridis is leaving the company and will retire May 1, 2013. Lazaridis leaves less than a month after his co-founder Jim Balsillie sold all of his stock and left the company.
