It will be mixed feelings for the executives of BlackBerry as they reported a 35% drop in their first quarter revenue and at the same time announced the launch of BlackBerry Radar; its new end-to-end asset tracking system.
The Canadian telecommunication and wireless firm formerly-known-as Research In Motion Limited said it posted a net loss of $670 million which is at odds with the declaration it made barely a year ago when it reported a profit of $68 million. BlackBerry which disclosed this information during an investor conference call also revealed that it sold approximately 500,000 smartphones in the last quarter report.
John Chen, the CEO of BlackBerry, said, “BlackBerry is differentiated by cross-platform market leadership in software, an end-to-end secure mobility platform, and a strong financial foundation. Our Q1 results highlight these attributes. Excluding IP licensing, we have more than doubled our software revenue on a year-over-year basis for the second consecutive quarter, driven by our EMM, secure messaging and QNX embedded software businesses. In our Mobility Solutions business, our objective is to achieve operating profitability in the short term. We also expect to generate positive free cash flow for the full year.”
The decline in BlackBerry’s profit will not come as a surprise to many industry watchers because smartphones users now prefer the Android Operating System to the BlackBerry Operating System. Even the production of BlackBerry Android Operating System has so far failed to reverse the tech company’s fortunes.
