I was wondering where all the new BerryReview readers were coming from. 🙂 Looks like RIM added another 3.8 million BlackBerry users in Q1. Not bad but slightly less than the 3.9 they added in Q4 of last year. They did pretty well in terms of revenue making 33% more than Q1 of last year totaling $643.03 million. Sadly the stock market is not that happy that RIM is only meeting expectations and not exceeding them but its pretty damn good in this economy.
What I really never understood is that RIM’s revenue is broken down to:
- 81% for devices
- 13% for services
- 2% for software
- 4% other revenue
Keeping that in mind it makes me wonder why consumers, who saw a 80% in growth this quarter, are getting the short stick when it comes to RIM features! To get the full BlackBerry experience they need to get on a BES server with no option for exchange PIM sync without one. This really puts RIM is a quandary since practically EVERY OTHER smartphone lets you sync your PIM OTA to Microsoft Exchange without purchasing anything extra. I used to think they did this because BES was a big cash cow but it makes up for significantly less than 20% of their revenue. RIM really needs to offer consumers a solution and quick!
According to Gartner they have also increased their worldwide smartphone market share to 19.9% compared to 13.3 percent in Q1 of 2008. They also sold about 7.8 million new BlackBerrys which is impressive. RIM predicts that they will sell another 8.1-8.7 million BlackBerrys in the current quarter.
My buddy Kyle also did a write-up on the investors conference call that is a good read at this link.
via Press Release
