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RIM sold more than 10 million BlackBerry phones during the third quarter, beating the previous record of 8.3 million, set during the second quarter. By contrast, Apple shipped 7.4 million iPhones in the most recent quarter. "This shows that RIM is as popular a device as it's ever been, selling more units than its largest competitor," said Duncan Stewart, director of research and analysis at DSam Consulting.After initially focusing on corporate customers, RIM has expanded its reach into the consumer market in recent years with such touch-screen models as the BlackBerry Storm. Two years ago, half of RIM's new subscribers were business customers.The IDC numbers show that RIM, maker of the wildly popular BlackBerry wireless device, held 53.6 percent of the U.S. market for smartphones in the second quarter, up from 44.5 percent in the first quarter. RIM said fourth-quarter revenue is expected to be in the range of $4.2 billion and $4.4 billion, beating analysts' expectation of $4.1 billion. The company also said gross margin is expected to be at 43.5 percent and earnings per share in the range of $1.23 to $1.31 per share.
RIM, which is based in Waterloo, Ontario, said Thursday that it earned $628.4 million, or $1.10 per share, in the quarter that ended Nov. 28. That compares with $396.3 million, or 69 cents per share, in the same quarter a year earlier.
RIM's better-than-expected report comes as BlackBerry users in North America faced delays in receiving e-mail on their devices Thursday. RIM said that technicians isolated and resolved the issue and that it is investigating the cause.Users were still able to make phone calls, browse the Internet and send and receive text messages. RIM didn't say how many users were affected or how long the outage lasted. RIM said some customers may still experience delays as e-mail queues are processed.
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