The new OS will power a new generation of phone, which the company hopes will
allow it to reduce the increasing dominance of Google Android and Apple, and
to fend off the challenges coming from Nokia and Microsoft.
RIM said that it could not get enough chips for its new phones and that the
delays were unavoidable.
The company’s co-CEO Mike Lazaridis also disappointed investors by cutting its
prediction of sales to between 11 and 12 million smartphones in the current
Christmas quarter, down from 14.8 million over the same time last year.
The delays mean the BB10 range, which will use the QNX operating system that
runs the BlackBerry PlayBook, will now be available late in 2012, rather
than by March. The PlayBook itself has however cost BlackBerry an extra
$365million in charges for unsold devices.
"It may take some time to realise the benefits of the platform transition that
we are undertaking, but we continue to believe that RIM has the right set of
strengths and capabilities to maintain a leading role in the mobile
communications industry,” RIM's joint chief executives Jim Balsillie and
Mike Lazaridis said in a statement.
RIM's share of the smartphone market in the US fell to 9.2 per cent in the
third quarter from 24 per cent in the same period last year, according to
research group Canalys. Analysts said that the latest bad news will only
increase the pressure on RIM to try to find a buyer.
Net income was $265m (£171m) for the quarter up to 26 November. That was down
from $911m in the equivalent period of 2010. In after-hours trading, shares
dropped by more than 6 per cent.
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