BlackBerry Revenues Not Meeting Expectations

Research In Motion (RIM), the maker of all BlackBerry smartphones, has warned investors that its revenue for last quarter isn't going to meet its earlier expectations.

This comes in the wake of Palm Inc.'s announcement that its quarterly revenue was below what analysts were predicting, but RIM's shortfall is much smaller percentage of the total. RIM says it took in between $2.75 and $2.78 billion, while it had previously expected between $2.95 and $3.10 billion. Palm's revenue was only about two-thirds of the expected amount.

Two Words: Product Delays

RIM says the majority of the drop in revenue during the September-to-November quarter comes from lower than predicted shipments of its products. It blames general economic weakness in the United States for part of this, but also cites delays in releasing its products.

Two important new models -- the BlackBerry Bold and BlackBerry Storm -- debuted in the U.S. in November. Both of these were originally scheduled to come out much earlier, and these delays surely cut into RIM's sales.

Canadian-based RIM's revenues were also impacted by the strengthening of the U.S. dollar during the quarter.

"Initial sales of new products have been very positive and we believe we have the strongest smartphone portfolio in the industry by far, however product launch timing, general economic conditions and foreign exchange volatility have tempered our results in the third quarter," said Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO at RIM.

The company says its profit for last quarter will likely be in the range of 81 cents to 83 cents per share. 

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