RIM Reports Q3 Earnings, Falling Profits, Shipped Only 150k PlayBooks

RIM released its fiscal Q3 2012 earnings report today and although the numbers are dismal, the company remains chipper about what lies ahead. Profits fell to just $256 million with a revenue of $5.2 billion, just shy of the projected $5.6 billion for this quarter. These numbers are down from $329 million in profit from the previous quarter and $911 million from the previous year.

BlackBerry devices shipped 14.1 million units worldwide, which is up 33 percent from last quarter, an improvement likely due to the recent introduction of a slew of new BlackBerry 7 devices. Customer reach is now at 75 million, increasing 33 percent from last year, while revenues were up 24 percent from last quarter.

The company is still struggling to move its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, which shipped only 150,000 units this quarter. Earlier this month, RIM had announced that it would be taking a $485 million hit for its stockpiled PlayBooks to account for the reduced pricing. The global service outage in October has also attributed a $54 million charge.

RIM insists it will remain committed to its PlayBook tablet and platform transition, saying that "it may take some time to realize the benefits of these efforts and the platform transition that we are undertaking, but we continue to believe that RIM has the right set of strengths and capabilities to maintain a leading role in the mobile communications industry." Nonetheless, RIM's stock fell 7 percent in after hours trading.

[via VentureBeat]