We tend to try to step daintily over raw business news around these parts, but RIM has posted their fourth-quarter profits and they’re looking laudably healthy. From TheStar.com’s report:
The company added 2.18 million subscribers in the fourth quarter, bringing its total subscriber base to more than 14 million. RIM said in February that gains for the period had exceeded its own forecast of 1.82 million by as much as 20 per cent.While RIM’s BlackBerry email devices remain a staple of the corporate crowd, the company continues to push into the consumer market with devices that come equipped with music players, Web browsers and access to social networking content, including Facebook.
Profits also basically doubled.
Anecdotally this jibes with my observations over the last few months. Many of my friends have picked up iPhones (if they’re feature sluts like me), but most people I know have moved on to a version of the Blackberry as a less expensive email-capable phone. Especially the Pearl. And these are everyday folks, not executives.
RIM outlook defies doomsayers [TheStar.com]
When I looked, the blackberry added $30 to my monthly bill and the iphone added $20, so I figured that meant the iphone could be $240 more expensive and they were still the same price over the next two years.