Ah, the Blackberry phone. The mainstay of mobile email all round the world. Looks like its shift in focus away from being business-only, to being a proper consumer phone may be going rather well, according to stats released by Research In Motion, who actually make them. It would seem that RIM have sold their 50 millionth Blackberry!
The tone of the press release does suggest, as well, that RIM were a little bit surprised themselves, by the earnings…
RIM also confirmed that their current user base comes in at 25 million handsets, and that the last quarter alone accounts for 3.9 million of those. Not that surprising, really, when you consider that the last quarter’s sales was probably based on the Blackberry Bold and the touchscreened up Blackberry Storm, a phone that Matt saw in the hands of a humble cabby, once (he tells me he was shocked and unnerved by the revelation of a taxi driver having a Storm, like the whole world was strange and new… well, he didn’t use those exact words, but that’s what he looked like he was thinking)…
Oh, and as for earnings, RIM announced revenue in Q4 2008 of $3.46 billion, nearly a 25% jump from Quarter 3.
That should put them in a nice position, for the rest of the year, but… let’s face it, they’re going to need it, AND they’re going to need to refresh their phones soon. At the very least, we need a successor to the Storm, since Blackberry are going to be facing off more and more phones designed with email in mind; there’s the HTC Snap, for a start, with its Inner Circle email gimmick.
Oh, and of course, don’t forget the Nokia N97, which isn’t designed purely for email, but which does have that nice big QWERTY keyboard, and seems destined to take a bite out of the Blackberry’s market…
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