BlackBerry holding company RIM (Research In Motion) has reported its Q3 financial results, with revenue for the third quarter of the firm’s fiscal 2013 coming to $2.7 billion (R23.05 billion).

This marks a quarterly decrease of 5% and a considerable year-on-year drop of 47%, compared to revenue of $2.9 billion (R24.76 billion) in the previous quarter and $5.2 billion (R44.40 billion) for the same quarter last year. The revenue breakdown for the quarter was approximately 60% for hardware, 36% for services rendered and 4% for software as well as other revenue.

During the quarter, the Canadian smartphone and tablet maker managed to ship around 6.9 million BlackBerry smartphones (down from 7.4 million in Q2) and about 255 000 BlackBerry PlayBook tablets, almost doubling Q2’s 130 000 tablet shipment tally. This is a far cry from the 26.9 million iPhones and 14 million iPads that Apple managed to ship during its most recent financial term (fiscal Q4 2012).

After growing its global BlackBerry subscriber base during the past quarter to approximately 80 million users worldwide, RIM now states that the subscriber base has dropped by a considerable million users to 79 million. Following a series of net profit losses, RIM posted a $14 million profit for its fiscal Q3, but this was mainly due to $166 million favourable tax settlement.

RIM’s future outlook

Over the next quarter, the company expects continued pressure on its operating results as it gets ready to launch (on 30 January 2013) the BlackBerry 10 mobile platform within its financial Q4 2013.

RIM plans on utilising enticing pricing initiatives for its current BlackBerry 7.1 OS-operating smartphones, coupled with lowered service fees in some key markets as a way to maintain its subscriber base. This, as the firm expects the BlackBerry 10 launch to impact on sales of current BlackBerry 7 OS operating devices, with customers anticipated to defer purchasing decisions in order to wait for the first BlackBerry 10 devices. RIM is anticipating to report an operating loss for its fiscal fourth quarter.

“RIM continued to execute on its product roadmap plans and to deliver on key financial metrics as it gets set for the global launch of BlackBerry 10,” stated Thorsten Heins, RIM’s president and CEO. “During the third quarter, we continued to demonstrate our strong financial position, generating $950 million in cash flow from operations, and increasing our cash position significantly to more than $2.9 billion.”

“More than 150 carriers are currently completing technical acceptance programs for the first BlackBerry 10 products, and beta trials of BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 are underway at more than 120 enterprises including 64 Fortune 500 companies. This is an exciting time and our carrier partners, application developers and employees are all looking forward to unveiling the innovation and excitement of BlackBerry 10 to our customers on January 30, 2013,” Heins concluded.

 

In other mobile industry related news, data analytics company IHS iSuppli recently forecasted that Samsung will be the top mobile OEM (original equipment manufacturer) over the entire 2012 period, relegating Nokia to second place for the first time in 14 years.