RIM Beats Market on International BlackBerry Sales

The results were more than expected and have completely amazed everyone. We are talking about the third quarter results of the Canadian company, Research In Motion. The company’s strong sales and the figures of revenue, total income, number of customers, and the number of the devices shipped- everything has surpassed the expectations and forecasts of analysts.

Though Research In Motion was confronted with competition from biggies like Apple’s iPhone, Motorola’s Droid and several other smartphones, it managed to fight back with aggression and emerged a winner. The surpassingly good results of the third quarter can be attributed to a number of reasons. The new additions to the BlackBerry smartphone line like the Curve 8520 and the Bold 2 has been able to draw much attention of not only potential customers in the U.S, but also from outside it. This can be the result of the promotion executed by the North American carriers like AT&T Inc and Sprint Nextel Corp.

Another selling point of the BlackBerry smartphones could be the BlackBerry Messenger. Using this application, BlackBerry users get the cool advantage of texting other BlackBerry users without having to pay for texting. This feature has particularly caught attention in markets where the cost of texting is high while the disposable income is low.

Clearly the revenue and earning per share hold enough testimony to the company’s excellent performance in the third quarter. As opposed to last year’s third quarter revenue of $ 2.78 billion, this year saw revenue of $3.92 billion, a 41% increase from last year’s results and an 11% increase over the last quarter’s revenue. Analysts had expected revenue of $3.78 billion with $1.04 earning per share. The quarter witnessed a net income of $628.4 million, thus leading to earning per share to stand at $1.10, much higher than expected. The net income was also a 59% increase over the $396.3 million net income last year’s third quarter.

The company had a record breaking shipment of 10.1 million handsets which set the shares surge to more than 12% in after-hours trading. The number of new subscribers has also surpassed the expectations and forecasts of the analysts who had predicted it at 4.1 million with shipments of 9.5 million new devices, while the actual figure stands at 4.4 million new subscribers. In fact, 37% of the revenue and 35% of its subscriber base was coming not from Canada and U.S, rather from other countries.

Source: Inquistr Online