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Research In Motion have been facing the toughest battle in the last 18 months against Apple iOS and Google Android. The latest news to reach us is that they could face a $1bn writedown from a huge stockpile of unsold smartphones and tablets.
According to the BBC, the company are going to admit the writedown, their third since December. The quarterly results are looking bad, forcing the company to axe staff. The stockpile of hardware grew 18 percent to over $1bn last quarter. This is faster than any other company in the industry, according to a Bloomberg data report.
Yesterday RIM called in banking organisation JP Morgan and The Royal Bank of Canada to conduct a ‘strategic review' of the business. They also suspended trading in their shares.
The company have faced incredible competition from Apple and Google in recent years and their Playbook tablet has been an unmitigated disaster, failing to excite the public. Blackberry OS 10 may help the company sell more product, but analysts are unsure of their future.
Thorsten Heins, the company CEO and president issued a statement which read there would be “headcount reductions in some areas” and “we will continue to spend and hire in key areas such as those associated with the launch of BlackBerry 10, and those tied to the growth of our application developer community.”
He added that company performance would “continue to be challenging for the next few quarters”. An operating loss for the quarter is almost guaranteed.
Kitguru says: The big question is, can RIM survive throughout 2012 and 2013, even by reducing their staff numbers?
