Wireless device maker Research in Motion said demand
for its e-mail device remains strong despite analysts’ fears that a crucial
patent loss could chase enterprise customers away.
The Canadian firm, which was slapped with a 53 million
patent infringement judgment recently, said preliminary results show
second quarter revenues will be in the range of $123 million to $126
million, much higher than original estimates of between $105 million and
$115 million.
The company, which markets the BlackBerry wireless e-mail device, said
second quarter net income would also exceed initial forecasts.
Excluding the patent litigation provision, RIM expects adjusted diluted
earnings to be between 7 cents and 11 cents per share.
More importantly, the company expects the number of net new BlackBerry
subscribers in the quarter to be between 94,000 and 97,000, much higher than
earlier forecasts 80,000 to 90,000 for the second.
Immediately after the penalty phase of the patent infringement suit was
filed against RIM by Virginia-based NTP Inc., analysts warned that the
fallout from the legal
loss would hurt RIM’s push into the enterprise market. The judgment
included a ruling that RIM must cease selling its flagship BlackBerry
handheld devices in the U.S. — its largest market.
The immediate impact of the ruling was stayed to allow RIM to file an
appeal but Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg reckoned that fear
and uncertainty would hit the company hard. “This is not good news for RIM
as
the U.S. is their largest market. Even though the judge did not execute the
injunction effective immediately, the fear and uncertainty will likely have
many corporate users looking to competitive solutions,” Gartenberg said.
When final second quarter results are reported on September 25th, RIM
expects the BlackBerry subscriber base to be in excess of 700,000.
Gartenberg said large enterprises, which make up the most valuable
customer base for RIM, would likely start looking at competing devices from
the likes of Microsoft, Good Technology, Palm and Visto if the legal
proceedings drag on.
However, in a statement, RIM insisted demand for its products remained
high. “RIM’s business generated higher than expected revenue during the
summer months resulting in a record quarter. The top-line growth together
with prudent expense management also allowed us to significantly exceed our
profitability targets,” said RIM chief financial officer Dennis
Kavelman.
In a statement, Kavelman said global demand for BlackBerry accelerated in
both enterprise and consumer market segments. He said RIM fulfilled orders
to its carrier partners during the most recent quarter to satisfy new
subscriber growth, hardware upgrade sales and retail channel expansion
requirements.
Separately, RIM announced the availability of its S/MIME Support Package
v1.5 for BlackBerry. The company said the software add-on would provide
S/MIME
devices.
S/MIME, or Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, is a standards-based
protocol for formatting non-ASCII messages so that they can be sent over the
Internet. It uses public key cryptology to provide writer-to-reader security
features such as authentication and confidentiality message integrity.
