Smartphone maker BlackBerry is reported to be in big trouble after a "larger-than-expected" revenue drop during the 3rd quarter. BlackBerry has not met its projected sales for the said quarter and have not fully recovered from the impact.
From $1.19 billion returns last year, it drops to $793 million. The figures fall short of the expectations of the analyst. John Chen, the new chief executive is not satisfied with the revenue figure.
The company's latest release, the BlackBerry 10 phones has not met the high expectations of both the company's and consumers. After investing in the promotions of numerous touchscreen keyboard devices, it decided to go back to its origin which is to emphasize the "physical keyboards" its most avid fans want.
Last November, BlackBerry Ltd. uncovered a "new classic model" with a keyboard. In an interview, Chen told Reuters that the company was crafting "3 new key-board centric" gadgets and would possibly launch them in the next 18 months.
During a conference call last Friday, the chief executive stated that BlackBerry is set to start a new production run of its "bold" devices that run on the older BlackBerry 7 platform due to consumers' strong demands.
According to this company, it has acknowledged hardware revenue for approximately 1.3 million BlackBerry Smartphones during the 4th quarter, compared to approximately 1.9 million devices in the 3rd quarter.
In addition, about 3.4 million devices were sold to the consumer, and this also covers the shipments and received before the 4th quarter. BlackBerry also said that 68% of these gadgets were BlackBerry 7.
The company's net loss amounted to $423 million, or 80 cents per share, for the 4th quarter ended March 1st. This number is comparable to a $98 million profit last year or 19 cents per share.
BlackBerry reported 8 cents per share loss if the restructuring charges and other one-time items are excluded. The average estimate of the analyst was a loss of 55 cents.