RIM Hits 78 Million BlackBerry Subscribers, Up From 70 Million In September 2011

Jordan Crook

Jordan Crook studied English Literature at New York University before entering the tech space. Prior to joining TechCrunch, Crook dabbled in mobile marketing and mobile apps as well as doing device reviews for MobileMarketer and MobileBurn. Crook is fascinated with alternative energy production and greentech. She is now a writer for CrunchGear. Hello → Learn More

Thursday, June 28th, 2012
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Today on RIM’s Q1 2013 conference call, CEO Thorsten Heins admitted that “this was a challenging quarter for the company,” but announced 78 million subscribers with “churn remaining high.” He admitted particular success with the BlackBerry Bold product.

For a little context, RIM hit 70 million global subscribers all the way back in September of 2011.

Subscriber base grew in Asia, Middle East and Europe, particularly. He also mentioned that U.S. revenue has stabilized, though the outlook for the next few quarters is “very challenging.”

Along with the subscriber update, Heins announced 260,000 PlayBook shipments, and said that new versions of the PlayBook are on the way. Regarding BB10, it’s on its way in Q1 2013. “I will not deliver a product to the market that is not ready for our customers or doesn’t have the outstanding user experience that I expect Blackberry to have. I will not compromise on this issue,” he said.


Company: Blackberry
Launch Date: 1984
IPO: NASDAQ:BBRY

BlackBerry (formerly Research in Motion) is a Canadian designer, manufacturer and marketer of wireless devices and solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. The company is best known as the developer of the BlackBerry smart phone. Blackberry technology also enables a broad array of third party developers and manufacturers to enhance their products and services with wireless connectivity to data. Blackberry was founded in 1984. Based in Waterloo, Ontario, the company has offices in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific....

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