RIM posts blockbuster fourth quarter
Global economic meltdown be damned! RIM's humming right along, apparently, reporting a killer fourth quarter with $412.5 million in profit, beating its own estimates and netting more than double the amount from the same period a year prior. Jim Balsillie himself chimed in on the results, saying that the company "did not see any evidence of slowdown in our enterprise business" -- amazing, considering that a stagnating job market would seem to lead to smaller BlackBerry budgets. Perhaps even more impressive, though, is that RIM is predicting first quarter earnings that'll significantly outpace analyst estimates in the face of stiff competition that's getting ever stiffer in RIM's own enterprise turf and an economy that's showing no sign of turning around any time soon. Don't suppose they could divert some of those fat profits to shoring up shaky servers, hmm?[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Filed under: RIM
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Konceptz @ Apr 7th 2008 3:20PM
Woohoo, exciting.
Probably because of the new designs actually made me look at the devices before falling asleep.
Ethan @ Apr 7th 2008 5:23PM
Blackberries are generally targeted towards upper-middle-class and upper-class professionals, who aren't really feeling the effect of the recession too much (based on personal experience)
Will @ Apr 7th 2008 9:27PM
based on my sales experience over the last year and a half, i have more teens buying blackberry's than business people...this despite the fact that we have handsets like the iPhone available in my store
Ethan @ Apr 7th 2008 10:36PM
Really? I have a Curve and I'm 17, but I always figured I was in the tech-loving minority... out of the 100 or 200 people at my school I'm pretty sure I'm one of two people with a smartphone, and the other guy has an iPhone.
Maybe most of the corporate devices are purchased through a different channel?
Will @ Apr 7th 2008 10:55PM
we get a lot of small business' purchasing directly from the store, i would say you would totally be shocked if you walked into the 2 high school's in my town or around the college campus....teens want the full keyboard to text on these days and blackberry's are a lot more user friendly than winmo devices are. that's the market that RIM is winning over that is allowing them to make so much profit
Ethan @ Apr 7th 2008 11:41PM
That doesn't account for all the enterprise/government purchases, who almost certainly have their own retail channels.
Everyone I know who likes QWERTY besides me has an enV or a Sidekick, except for two people, one of whom has a Pearl and another who actually needs a smartphone. YMMV apparently.
s h @ Apr 7th 2008 6:36PM
Blackberry is seeing such strong growth despite the economic recession, very simply because they just broke into the consumer market, with the blackberry pearl & curve becoming one of the most popular consumer devices, they still have a long road of growth in the consumer space ahead of them.
undersaur @ Apr 8th 2008 12:15AM
Chris Z, most of the global economic meltdown news has been from Q1 2008. The effects at the end of 2007 were more subtle.
I'm a 26-year-old yuppie who just got his first Blackberry (a Pearl), and it was for personal use rather than work. I just wanted a 3G phone I could use as a modem, plus I wanted web browsing capabilities and some kind of pointing device (touch screen would have been fine too). I didn't realize in advance how many 3rd party applications are available, like Google Talk, so those are all bonuses to me.
I've sort of missed out on a whole generation of smart phones since my last phone, a Samsung SGH-X820, wasn't officially supported by AT&T, plus I wasn't paying for data service anyway.
chris_himself @ Apr 8th 2008 1:11AM
I just bought a curve and i could care less about the enterprise system, they are just solid phone overall compared to the smartphone offering from the other companies that just dont give a damn
ManoloDF @ Apr 8th 2008 3:58AM
I use both a Curve and an Iphone, and I have the Curve only because its the only smartphone with UMA technology, which will allow free calls from within wifi as well as free roaming when I am abroad and have a wifi signal