Blackberry PearlStrong sales of the BlackBerry Pearl smartphone helped Research in Motion brush aside rivals and add 1.125m subscribers in the fourth quarter. The Canadian manufacturer of the BlackBerry family of mobile communications devices said it ended the period with more than 8m BlackBerry subscribers (with free Blackberry Pearl Software) boosted by growing acceptance of the Pearl and the BlackBerry 8800 as mainstream multimedia-enabled smartphones. As a result, fourth-quarter net income increased to Dollars 187.9m, or 99 cents a share, from Dollars 18.4m, or 10 cents, a year earlier. Revenue jumped to Dollars 930.4m from Dollars 561.2m. RIM's devices have faced growing competition from Palm's Treo, Motorola's Q, Samsung's Blackjack and smartphones from market leader Nokia. However, the latest results underscore the success of RIM's strategy to broaden its product line. Jim Balsillie, the company's co-chief executive, expressed confidence that it was entering a fast growth phase as more carriers began to offer BlackBerry devices. "We feel as though the business is turbocharged." For the next quarter, RIM said it expected revenue of Dollars 1.025bn-Dollars 1.075bn and to add 1.125m-1.15m subscribers. It expected net earnings of between 99 cents and Dollars 1.07 a share and adjusted earnings of Dollars 1.01 to Dollars 1.09 a share. RIM also revealed that an informal inquiry by the US Securities and Exchange Commission into stock-option grants had become a formal investigation. RIM's shares fell 6.9 per cent to Dollars 136 in after-hours electronic trade, after closing down Dollars 2.29, or 1.5 percent, at Dollars 146.02 on Nasdaq. Personal Technology column evaluates Research In Motion Ltd's Pearl, the smallest BlackBerry with free software ever made and the smallest smart phone with a keyboard; concludes that the Pearl is 'a beautiful piece of work, a very nice combination of hard-core email capability and fun features'; the Pearl will be released next week by T-Mobile at a cost of $199 with a two-year contract. Mobile teamed with BlackBerry developer Research in Motion to bring the new Pearl BlackBerry smart phone to the United States. In addition to the expected business productivity features and wireless e-mail support (including the ability to access 10 different e-mail accounts), the Pearl steps up the entertainment value with a camera phone with 5x zoom functions, MP3 player and mobile video player. It also supports master ringtone playback, and has 64MB of memory and a expansion slot for a microSD card. And for the jet-setter crowd, the Pearl also works in other countries with GSM networks. |