Bad news for RIM drops stock 14%: a poor earnings report and a delay in the 4G BlackBerry PlayBook

After the stock market closed on Thursday, RIM reported earnings for the first quarter that fell short of internal expectations not to mention the estimates of Wall Street analysts. Blaming the economic recession and product delays, the Canadian tech company reported earnings of $695 million for Q1, down from last year's $769 million. The company lowered its expectations for the current quarter to earnings of .75 cents to $1.05 a share while Wall Street was looking for $1.36 a share for Q2. For the full year, RIM now expects to earn $5.25 to $6.00 a share, off from a previous estimate made in April of $7.50 a share. Investors have been dropping the stock like a slippery smartphone with the shares off 14% since the report was released.

RIM Co-Ceo Jim Balsillie said, "The slowdown we saw in the first quarter is continuing into Q2, and delays in new product introductions into the very late part of August is leading to a lower than expected outlook in the second quarter." The company also said that it would streamline costs by laying off some workers. And the news went from bad to worse when RIM announced that the 4G version of the BlackBerry PlayBook, expected to launch this summer with an LTE version for Verizon, a WiMax model for Sprint and an HSPA+ variant for AT&T-will be delayed until this fall.

If there was one bright spot for the company, it was the 500,000 units of the Wi-Fi version of the BlackBerry PlayBook that was sold in the first quarter, beating some estimates. 200,000 units went to distribution channels while 250,000 to 300,000 were sold to end users. RIM did not reveal how many of the tablets in the distribution channels were sold through to end users. The number compares with the 250,000 units of the Motorola XOOM tablet shipped in the first two months of life, and more than 1 million units shipped in less than two months for the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

source: YahooFinance, BGR (1), (2), (3)