People have been asking for my take on RIM's latest quarterly earnings, which were reported last week (link). The short answer is that I am both less worried and more worried than I was before. I am less worried because the company has more strength than I realized internationally, and I am more worried because the situation in North America is worse than I thought.
Before I get into my comments, I should point out that I don't think you can use a single quarter to declare a company either dead or saved, especially when it's as big and prominent as RIM. In the last couple of years, attitudes toward RIM have gone through a couple of cycles in which negative coverage about the company builds up, the company has a good quarter, and the coverage dies down for a while again. I think it's more useful to look beyond the individual quarters and try to see the long term trends.
In that spirit, I think RIM's earnings were good, but I was more interested in the things management said about moving toward new products and services, and by the very rapid changes happening in RIM's international sales. Overall, I wouldn't say the company is out of the woods at all, and 2011 will be a decisive test of its viability. Here's an overview of the earnings, followed by some comments on international and the new products.
Updating the charts
I plugged the latest numbers into the charts from my post on RIM in October (link). They generally look like good news:
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