Research In Motion, the company behind BlackBerry mobile devices, has reported its fourth quarter results for the financial year that ended on 3rd March 2012. During the quarter, it shipped approximately 11.1 million BlackBerry smartphones and over 500,000 BlackBerry PlayBook tablets.
Revenue was down 25% year-on-year to $4.2 billion (and was also down 19% from the previous quarter). Around 68% of this came from hardware, 27% from services and 5% for software and other revenue. Overall, the company made a net loss of $125 million - having made a quarterly profit of $934 million a year ago.
RIM now plans to focus more on enterprise sales, although it’s not turning its back on providing BlackBerry services to consumers. It also announced the departure of director and former co-CEO Jim Balsillie and the retirement of Chief Technology Officer David Yach.
Thorsten Heins, President & CEO of Research In Motion, said “I have assessed many aspects of RIM’s business during my first 10 weeks as CEO. I have confirmed that the Company has substantial strengths that can be further leveraged to improve our financial performance, including RIM’s global network infrastructure, a strong enterprise offering and a large and growing base of more than 77 million subscribers. I’m very excited about the prospects for the BlackBerry 10 platform, which is on track for the latter part of calendar 2012. Notwithstanding these strengths and opportunities, the business challenges we face over the next several quarters are significant and I am taking the necessary steps to address them. In addition to delivering the BlackBerry 10 platform and refocusing resources on RIM’s key opportunities, such as BlackBerry Mobile Fusion and new integrated service offerings, we will also drive greater operational performance through a variety of initiatives including increased management accountability and process discipline. In parallel, we are undertaking a comprehensive review of strategic opportunities including partnerships and joint ventures, licensing, and other ways to leverage RIM’s assets and maximize value for our stakeholders.”
[Financial results (pdf)]