BlackBerry shares have dropped by 20 per cent after the company revealed an unexpected operating loss for its Q1 2013.
The US stock market saw BlackBerry shares tumble by 20 per cent to $11.58 (£7.59) before the markets opened this morning due to the company’s Q1 2013 announcement.
The BlackBerry Z10 manufacturer posted a net loss of $84 million (£55 million) for its first quarter, which ended June 1. Despite launching its newest OS, BlackBerry 10, the Canadian company is struggling to compete against the dominant Android devices created by Samsung, HTC, Google and others.
Having posted a $94 million (£62 million) profit the previous quarter, BlackBerry had been predicted to report an average profit of 8 cents (5p) per share.
“During the first quarter, we continued to focus our efforts on the global roll out of the BlackBerry 10 platform,” said Heins.
BlackBerry has launched three BlackBerry 10 devices since the start of the year, the BlackBerry Z10, BlackBerry Q10 and BlackBerry Q5. This helped the company ship 6.8 million handsets in the first quarter, which is up from 6 million this time last year.
Of that figure 2.7 million BlackBerry 10 handsets were shipped during the quarter, despite both the Q10 and Z10 being on sale for a significant portion of the quarter.
However, Wall Street had estimated that the company would have shipped 7.45 million smartphone this quarter, boosted by Z10 and Q10 sales.
BlackBerry hasn’t offered an outlook for the remainder of 2013, stating that increasing competition makes it hard to make accurate predictions.
“The smartphone market remains highly competitive, making it difficult to estimate units, revenue and levels of profitability,” added Heins.
However, the company does remain positive despite the share price drop and unforeseen operating profit loss.
“Over the next three quarters, we will be increasing our investments to support the rollout of new products and services to demonstrate that BlackBerry has established itself as a leading and vibrant player in next-generation mobile computing solutions for both consumer and enterprise customers.”
Next, read why Samsung is hurting Android.
