BlackBerry is back in the black
BlackBerry posted a surprise profit for the quarter today. The Canadian company’s been struggling to stay relevant in the smartphone market but while the news is hopeful, it’s still too early to declare a turnaround.
RIM, the company that makes BlackBerry, has been taking a beating on Wall Street because sales of its smartphones have slowed and it posted a loss in the first three quarters of the fiscal year.
John Butler, a telecom analyst at Bloomberg Industries, says analysts didn’t expect the fourth quarter to be much different.
“BlackBerry did surprise the street. What they did was sold 1 million BlackBerry 10 phones and it only shipped in the last month of the quarter,” says Butler.
That’s the company’s newest comeback phone.
Chris Silva, an analyst at the Altimeter Group, says initial sales are hopeful, but the BlackBerry 10 still has a lot to prove.
“It’s definitely too early to call it a comeback, it’s not nearly the ground that they need to make up, there’s still a long road ahead of them,” says Silva.
According to Silva, BlackBerry lost customers last year, and so success doesn’t mean making up ground but adding to it. And today’s news didn’t do quite that.
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