HWZBB

The only BlackBerry community you will want to be in Singapore. Singapore BlackBerry users, unite!

HWZBB - The only BlackBerry community you will want to be in Singapore. Singapore BlackBerry users, unite!

RIM Q4 results

Yesterday afternoon, RIM had their Quarterly Earnings call. Here’s our short summary of what it has been all about as well as the official press release. Depending on how you look at it, however, it seems to hold quite some promise from our end.

For over half of the whole call, Mr. Heins have been talking about artnerships. My gut is telling me that it could be very likely that we will see the next generation of BlackBerry devices, BB10, being outsourced for manufacturing by another manufacturer (which i hope its not true, or I can see many, including myself dumping the whole legacy all together).

Sales outlook; It seems to be a bit of a bleak outlook, to say the least, but it was expected as BlackBerry 7 sell-through slowed while consumers wait for BlackBerry 10. A quick recap:

  • $2.1 billion in cash, cash equivalents, short-term and long-term investments at the end of the quarter, which increased by approximately $610 million in the quarter
  • Cash flow from operations of approximately $1.1 billion, up from approximately $900 million in Q3
  • Revenue of $4.2 billion, down 19% from the third quarter
  • GAAP net loss in Q4 of $125 million or $0.24 per share diluted; adjusted net income of $418 million or $0.80 per share diluted
  • BlackBerry smartphone shipments of 11.1 million in Q4, down 21% from Q3
  • BlackBerry will not be giving up control of hardware; however, that doesn’t mean they need to make it themselves, it could mean they give another company spec benchmarks or blueprints and that company makes the phone
  • Seems like they are very inclined towards using partnerships to promote BB10
  • RIM will not be sold
  • Stronger investment in enterprise
  • Heins impression of RIM at day 2 of being CEO is very different than his position 10 weeks in today, partnerships focus is evidence of that change
  • They believe that they have a clear focus on the next 1-2 years for RIM
  • Heins feels that with BB10 RIM can grown into new consumer markets (hmm… We have been seeing Porsche’s…)

Overall, with the shake up of the senior executives, RIM is going to be a very lean, mean fighting machine. Mr Heins also noted in his opening speech that the structure of the company will be changing to allow, among other things, the talented people in the company to bring out positive change themselves and to foster innovative ideas within the company.

Well, like what many others have said, it seems like Mr Heins has heard the calls; We dont really need our own video/music store. He seems to be hinting a partnership to bring other providers such as amazon on board to sell these instead of the current stores.

Mr Heins mention on the stronger focus on enterprise (We assume is BlackBerry Fusion), but my concern is for the SME’s who want to use the platform at competitive costs and the main solution is the BES-Exchange-Windows combination which clearly will not be a winner. Perhaps we will see more answers to this soon.

They could also very well push to make QNX the vehicle OS standard which will be very good news for all BlackBerry users.

RIM is clearly NOT out of cash unlike what others have been saying, which puts RIM in a very bad box.

There are a lot of internal changes happening at RIM. Dan Dodge of QNX is now RIM’s Lead Software Architect. This will have big implications for the platform. Jim Balsillie has officially resigned from the Board of Directors, and following him is the CTO, David Yach, and COO, Jim Rowan. Nonetheless, the majority of RIM’s employee morale is high. Both the employees and from the conference call, we can see that the whole of RIM is confident that BlackBerry 10 will be the turning point.

Research In Motion is far from dead. They’ve made mistakes, they’ve fallen down hard but the most important part is that they’re getting back up. BlackBerry 10 is their last fighting chance, at least in North America. It would be ignorant to rule RIM out of the game just yet. Keep hope alive, and #BeBold.

For those interested in the full press release:

Spoiler Inside: Press Release SelectShow

Note: Despite numerous reports floating online such as on BBC, CNET rumouring that RIM is dumping its consumer market, it is NOT TRUE. As CIO has pointed out, BlackBerry WILL NOT be sold.

Category: News!

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