Commentary

Stephen Wellman
 

BlackBerry Continues To Fuel RIM's Success Despite Growing Scrutiny

Research in Motion (RIM), the company that makes the BlackBerry smartphone platform, continues to grow its revenue and subscriber base, despite ever-growing competition from across the wireless industry. Then why did the market slap it so hard?

Research in Motion (RIM), the company that makes the BlackBerry smartphone platform, continues to grow its revenue and subscriber base, despite ever-growing competition from across the wireless industry. Then why did the market slap it so hard?To put it mildly, RIM's last quarter rocked. The company reported $930.4 million in revenue, up 66% from the same quarter last year. RIM also posted a quarterly profit of $187.9 million. And here is the revenue breakdown: 73% from smartphones, 19% from services, 5% from software, and 3% from other sources. RIM added 1.2 million new BlackBerry subscribers last quarter, bringing its global subscriber base to 8 million.

RIM ended its fiscal year with revenue of $3 billion, up 47% from $2.1 billion last year.


More Mobility Insights

White Papers

More >>

Reports

More >>

Webcasts

More >>

Despite the amazing results, RIM's shares took a beating this week. The market was upset that RIM's earnings were slightly below projections. Also, RIM continues to face regulatory scrutiny in both the U.S. and Canada. And RIM's projections for 2008 are not as strong as many expected.

Yet, the BlackBerry marches on, gaining more subscribers and market share. Why does RIM continue to post such impressive results -- even in the face of a tepid stock market -- while the rest of the mobile e-mail market just sits there? That's because RIM continues to focus mercilessly on its mobile e-mail experience. So long as RIM continues to do this -- and its competitors don't -- the BlackBerry will continue to be a success.


Related Reading




Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags

These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.

<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags

These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>

<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

InformationWeek encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, InformationWeek moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. InformationWeek further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
T-Shirt Giveaway T-Shirt Giveaway: Each week we're selecting one great comment from our readers. The author of the comment will receive an InformaitonWeek Community t-shirt. So get posting!
Subscribe to RSS

Resource Links