Research In Motion has pushed back the release of its BlackBerry 10 operating system until Q1 2013 after the company on Thursday recorded a loss of more than half a billion dollars. The mobile tech firm released its financial statement for the quarter ended June 2, revealing one of its most difficult quarters in company history.
RIM is currently attempting to reduce its workforce as the company’s profitability continues to suffer.
The organization posted $2.8 billion in revenues for the previous quarter, down from $4.2 billion one year earlier. The company also reported a GAAP net loss of $518 million, up by $125 million from the previous quarter.
Year-over-year RIM has watched as it lost $1 billion from a previous year quarterly profit of $695 million.
RIM’s troubles have been attributed to various factors including a gross margin that has sunk from 43.9 percent to 28 percent and gross margins have fallen from $2.16 billion in 2011 to $788 million one year later.
RIM executives claim to still be focused on the development process for the BlackBerry 10 operating system while admitting that integrating the mobile OS has been met with software development issues.
Despite poor numbers the report actually revealed that RIM managed to grow its user based over the last quarter, now reaching 78 million subscribers, a number that keeps growing in all regions of the world outside of North America. The Blackberry App World is also now claiming more than 89,000 applications.
With RIM purging management and firing upwards of 5,000 employees the company could see a turn around in its profitability rather quickly if it can deliver an OS that both business users and everyday consumers want to use.
