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So, how's BlackBerry doing? Not too bad, actually.
The company formerly known as Research in Motion posted fourth-quarter results (.pdf) Thursday and boasted that it shipped approximately 1 million Z10 smartphones as of March 2 and brought in $114 million. Those aren't exactly staggering numbers, but they are a good start. Judging by the history of tech comebacks, sometimes a tiny start is all you need to survive.
Overall the results were a mixed bag. BlackBerry shipped 6 million handsets and rounded out its hardware numbers with a disappointing 370,000 PlayBook tablets shipped. Beyond the weak tablet sales, BlackBerry also lost 3 million subscribers between the third and fourth quarters. The Q4 subscriber base was pegged at 76 million, down from 79 million.
Still, the company is in good financial shape with reported income of $114 million on $2.7 billion revenue while maintaining an investments balance of $2.9 billion.
Because these results are from early March and the Z10 launched in the United States on March 23, it's too early to gauge what impact the flagship phone will have on a struggling company. BlackBerry desperately needs a hit to turn things around. Although Wednesday's earnings weren't stellar, the financial results following the introduction of a turnaround product aren't always sunshine and lollipops. Sometimes a small step forward is the best to be hoped for.
Take, for example, Microsoft and its attempt to move beyond the travesty of Vista. It launched Windows 7 the day before issuing rather bleak 2009 Q1 results. Revenue had declined 14 percent from the year before. Windows 7 helped turn things around. Second-quarter results showed revenue jumped 14 percent from the same time the previous year.
Of course, sometimes you get a runaway hit that lights up your balance sheet like a Christmas tree. Nintendo enjoyed that kind of bounce with the launch of Nintendo DS in 2004. The company posted a net profit of $366 million (.pdf) in 2003. The following year it reported a net profit of $718 million (.pdf), a jump of 96 percent.
Then there's the most well-known comeback in tech: Apple. At the 1998 Macworld Expo, Steve Jobs announced that the company had posted its first quarterly profit in more than a year. Impressive, but not enough to get analysts all excited. Some, in fact, predicted it would plunge further. Then came the iMac. Following its release in August 1998, Q4 results showed revenue dropped from $1.61 billion to $1.56 billion, but Apple still saw a net profit of $309 million -- the company's first annual profit since 1995. It was a huge turnaround from the loss of almost $1.05 billion in 1997.
Compared to Apple's first-quarter profit of $13.1 billion this year, $309 million seems pretty weak. And BlackBerry's $114 million seems like a drop in the financial bucket.
“It was a year for change and we delivered significant positive change,” BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said during the call.
