BlackBerry's Turnaround Effort Stalls, Company Posts 84 Million Q1 Loss
The company formerly known as Research In Motion (RIM) has some soul searching to do. After all the big talk, new platform and device launches, and even a name change to signify brighter days ahead, the company now known as BlackBerry notched an $84 million loss, or 13 cents per share, according to the firm's first quarter fiscal 2014 financial results.
Stating the obvious, BlackBerry noted in its financial report the smartphone market "remains highly competitive," adding that it's therefore "difficult to estimate units, revenue, and levels of profitability." That might be true, or BlackBerry may be trying to mitigate the inevitable fallout from a disappointing quarter. If so, it didn't work. Shares of BlackBerry dropped more than 25 percent in the aftermath and are now trading at $10.86 a pop (at the time of this writing).
Nevertheless, BlackBerry refused to hit the panic button, pointing out that it's perhaps a little too early to draw any conclusions about its turnaround effort.
"During the first quarter, we continued to focus our efforts on the global roll out of the BlackBerry 10 platform," said Thorsten Heins, President and CEO of BlackBerry. "We are still in the early stages of this launch, but already, the BlackBerry 10 platform and BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 are proving themselves to customers to be very secure, flexible and dynamic mobile computing solutions. Over the next three quarters, we will be increasing our investments to support the roll out of new products and services, and to demonstrate that BlackBerry has established itself as a leading and vibrant player in next generation mobile computing solutions for both consumer and enterprise customers."
To be fair, there were some positives, such as the fact that BlackBerry's revenue for Q1 jumped 15 percent from $2.7 billion in the previous quarter to $3.1 billion. Most of those dollars came from hardware (71 percent), followed by services (26 percent) and software (3 percent).
Stating the obvious, BlackBerry noted in its financial report the smartphone market "remains highly competitive," adding that it's therefore "difficult to estimate units, revenue, and levels of profitability." That might be true, or BlackBerry may be trying to mitigate the inevitable fallout from a disappointing quarter. If so, it didn't work. Shares of BlackBerry dropped more than 25 percent in the aftermath and are now trading at $10.86 a pop (at the time of this writing).
Nevertheless, BlackBerry refused to hit the panic button, pointing out that it's perhaps a little too early to draw any conclusions about its turnaround effort.
"During the first quarter, we continued to focus our efforts on the global roll out of the BlackBerry 10 platform," said Thorsten Heins, President and CEO of BlackBerry. "We are still in the early stages of this launch, but already, the BlackBerry 10 platform and BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 are proving themselves to customers to be very secure, flexible and dynamic mobile computing solutions. Over the next three quarters, we will be increasing our investments to support the roll out of new products and services, and to demonstrate that BlackBerry has established itself as a leading and vibrant player in next generation mobile computing solutions for both consumer and enterprise customers."
To be fair, there were some positives, such as the fact that BlackBerry's revenue for Q1 jumped 15 percent from $2.7 billion in the previous quarter to $3.1 billion. Most of those dollars came from hardware (71 percent), followed by services (26 percent) and software (3 percent).
