BlackBerry holding company Research In Motion (RIM) has reported its Q1 results for the three months ended on 28 May 2011. As one could have surmised by the company’s falling sales, having recently lost its spot as the second most preferred platform for US smartphone users to Apple, it wasn’t the Canadian manufacturer’s best quarter.  

The company’s revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2012 came to $4.9 billion, down 12% from $5.6 billion in the previous quarter, but up 16% from $4.2 billion in the same quarter of last year. 78% of the revenue for this quarter emanates from hardware revenue, 20% from service and 2% from software and other revenue.

During this quarter, RIM managed to ship about 13.2 million BlackBerry smartphones, such as the BlackBerry Bold 9780 and BlackBerry Curve 9300, as well as approx. 500 000 BlackBerry PlayBook tablet PCs.

Cost Optimisation Program:

RIM also announced that it will be kick-starting a program to streamline operations across the organisation, which will include layoffs. The company stated that this “realignment” will be focused on “taking out redundancies and a reallocation of resources”.

This will enable it to focus on the areas that offer the best chance of growth for the company, the likes of accelerating new product introductions, including the newly announced BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930. This program will be implemented during the start of the company’s fiscal Q2 and RIM expects the benefits to have an impact on its financial Q3 and beyond.

“Fiscal 2012 has gotten off to a challenging start. The slowdown we saw in the first quarter is continuing into Q2, and delays in new product introductions into the very late part of August is leading to a lower than expected outlook in the second quarter,” said Jim Balsillie, co-CEO at RIM.

“RIM’s business is profitable and remains solid overall with growing market share in numerous markets around the world and a strong balance sheet with almost $3 billion in cash. We believe that with the new products scheduled for launch in the next few months and realigning our cost structure, RIM will see strong profit growth in the latter part of fiscal 2012.”