By Teresa von Fuchs
Friday, December 21, 2007
This week Research In Motion announced strong Q3 results, despite fears of slowing corporate technology spending. Shares of RIM shot up 12% as the market opened this morning, after the BlackBerry maker announced profits twice that of the same quarter last year. RIM reported $1.67 billion in sales for the third quarter, 22% higher than the $1.37 billion announced for the previous quarter and double the $835 million reported for the third quarter last year. The company said it added 1.65 million new subscribers and shipped 3.9 million BlackBerrys during the quarter.
And the company isn't predicting a slowdown any time soon. In its quarterly report, RIM forecast sales for the fourth quarter of between $1.8 and $1.87 billion with estimated subscriber additions of 1.82 million.
Though the industry feared a slowdown for corporate IT spending could hurt the popular BlackBerry maker, RIM has made a solid push into the consumer market, offering more media-savvy handsets, while carriers lowered rates on subscription plans. The company said that nearly half of the new subscribers were consumers or small business accounts.