“Research In Motion Ltd. warned of slack sales for its BlackBerry smartphones in the current quarter, sending its shares plunging 11% in after-hours trading,” Ben Dummett and Roger Cheng report for The Wall Street Journal.
The warning, just a month after the company reported earnings and gave a weak short-term outlook, is fresh evidence that RIM is struggling to compete with Apple Inc. and other smartphone makers, especially in the U.S. market,” Dummett and Cheng report. “The revision comes after a lackluster debut of the company’s PlayBook tablet. The device went on sale earlier this month after delays and tepid reviews. But RIM said Thursday that early PlayBook sales were in line with its targets, which it didn’t disclose.”
Dummett and Cheng report, “The Canadian company’s shares fell $6.19 to $50.39 in after-hours trading. Before the news, the stock had gained 1.8% to $56.59 at 4 p.m. on the Nasdaq Stock Market. For the quarter ending in May, RIM said it now expects per-share earnings of $1.30 to $1.37, down from the $1.47 to $1.55 projected last month. RIM also said it expects shipments of BlackBerry phones for the quarter to be at the lower end of the range of 13.5 million to 14.5 million it forecast in March.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote back on August 5th of last year: “RIM. Dead company walking.”
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Dan K.,” “Jay,” and “Dominick P.” for the heads up.]
