Later this week, Research in Motion will present its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report to an eager Wall Street crowd. Anyone who knows anything about RIM is anticipating some pretty abysmal results, as market share for RIM’s Blackberry OS continues to decline at the hands of Android and iOS. RIM’s Blackberry 7 phones are fairly dated at this point, and RIM’s hail-mary Blackberry 10 platform won’t be out until the fall, leaving RIM playing the waiting game for a few more quarters.
Adding insult to injury, Barclays Capital Analyst Jeff Kvaal posted a note suggesting that the overall outlook for RIM for this quarter and beyond is “Grim and getting grimmer.” To be fair, Mr. Kvaal has a point, with three or four quarters to go before we start getting any Blackberry 10, it’s clear RIM’s financials probably won’t look too good for a while yet, and that’s if the company is ever able to turn it around.
For this fiscal quarter, Mr. Kvaal is anticipating $4.5 billion in revenue and 75 cents per share in profit, well below RIM’s estimate of $4.6 to 4.9 billion and 80 to 95 cents per share, and slightly below Wall Street’s $4.55 billion/82 cents per share expectations.
RIM’s possible last chance at turning the ship around closely resemble’s Microsoft’s attempt to jump into relevance. With Blackberry 10 and Windows Phone 8 (respectively), RIM and Microsoft need to completely blow the competition out of the water if they’re going to steal customers away from Android and iOS, who combined make up 75 to 85% of the smartphone market in the United States and abroad. Without monumental success in the fourth quarter, the potential for RIM to rule the roost once more will all but gone.
[via All Things D]
