RIM Posts Higher Revenue YOY, Ships 500,000 PlayBooks

– Canadian mobile phone maker Research In Motion has just announced its financial results for the first quarter of the fiscal year 2012, and revealed that its revenue went up by 16 percent to reach $4.9 billion, when compared to the $4.2 billion it registered in the same quarter a year ago.

Compared to $5.6 billion registered in the previous quarter, the company's revenue was down 12 percent.

The handset vendor also announced that its net income for the quarter was of $695 million, down both year on year and sequentially, from $934 million in Q1 FY2011, and $769 million in the previous quarter.

The company also unveiled that revenue breakdown for the quarter was approximately 78 percent for hardware revenue, 20 percent for services revenue, and around 2 percent for software and other revenue.

During the quarter, the handset vendor launched their first tablet PC, the BlackBerry PlayBook, which was sold in a number of 500,000 units in the United States.

“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 Research In Motion.

“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.”

The company plans on streamline operations across the organization to cut costs, something that will result in a series of layoffs.

The company plans on reallocating resources, so as to ensure that they benefit from highest growth opportunities and that they are in line with the RIM strategic objectives.