Research in Motion (RIMM NASDAQ) announced results for the quarter & year that ended on February 28, 2009. And on Friday, their stock was up over 20% (as of 3:30pm EDT). Based on that, you'd expect that their performance for the 4th quarter was pretty good, and you'd be absolutely correct. Revenue for the quarter was more than 80% higher than the same period previous year, and nearly 25% higher than the quarter that preceded it. The company's announcement also states "approximately 3.9 million net new BlackBerry® subscriber accounts were added in the quarter. At the end of the quarter, the total BlackBerry® subscriber account base was approximately 25 million."
Considering the fact that the three months that ended in February included some of the most difficult business conditions of the past 30 years, this is quite an accomplishment. Plus, the company expects to add another 3.7-3.9 million subscribers in the first fiscal quarter of 2009. We are already two-thirds of the way through that quarter, and I would suspect that this projections is going to be fairly accurate.
The key to sustaining this performance, of course, will hinge on RIM's ability to produce some innovative new products this year. Its only viable competitor is the iPhone, and it continues to maintain its hold on the public's imagination. And Apple is promsing to make the iPhone even better later this year.
RIM could end up buying Palm, but that would only create more customer churn in the market. If the BlackBerry can enable corporate users to seamlessly access internal resources, while taking advantage of Web 2.0 functionality, that would, I believe, solidify their position as the corporate standard for mobile devices.
Research in Motion's 4th Quarter Results
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