The final quarter of BlackBerry’s financial year, which ended on 1st March 2014, saw the company selling around 3.4 million smartphones to end users. However, it says over two-thirds of these ran on the older BlackBerry 7 platform, which means just 1.1 million were newer BlackBerry 10 smartphones.
Cost-cutting measures helped reduce the quarterly net loss to $423 million (£254 million), down from a $4.4 billion loss in the previous quarter. The equivalent quarterly figure a year ago was a net profit of $98 million.
Total revenue for the fourth quarter was down 18% from the previous quarter to $976 million (£586 million). That’s a year-on-year fall of 64%.
John Chen, Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of BlackBerry, said “I am very pleased with our progress and execution in fiscal Q4 against the strategy we laid out three months ago. We have significantly streamlined operations, allowing us to reach our expense reduction target one quarter ahead of schedule. BlackBerry is on sounder financial footing today with a path to returning to growth and profitability.”
[BlackBerry annual report (pdf)]