Research In Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) has decided to push back its annual meeting with the investment community until after it releases its next-generation BlackBerry 10 smartphones, scheduled for later this year.
"We decided to make BlackBerry World more focused on customers, developers and partners," RIM spokeswoman Tenille Kennedy told Reuters. "We will hold a separate session targeted at the interests of the investment community later this year, once BlackBerry 10 is launched."
The meeting with the investment community is usually scheduled to coincide with the company's annual BlackBerry World conference, which will be held in May. A new date for the meeting with investors hasn't been scheduled, according to Reuters. RIM has said it will unveil its BlackBerry 10 smartphones, on which it is betting much of the future of the company, in the "latter" part of the year.
RIM said last week it will hand out prototype BlackBerry 10 smartphone to thousands of developers at its BlackBerry Jam conference in May. The devices won't run the finalized version of the Blackberry 10 software that RIM will unveil later this year, but will instead be used by RIM to demonstrate that progress is being made in bringing the platform to market. RIM's BlackBerry 10 software is based on the QNX platform, which runs the company's PlayBook tablet.
Meanwhile, financial analysts are predicting a weak quarter from RIM, which is scheduled to announce its results Thursday after the market closes. Analysts generally expect RIM to hit the low end of its sales expectations of 11-12 million BlackBerry unit shipments, but some predict it could miss its own weakened targets.
Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair summed up the bleak outlook: "Our view is that the next four quarters show a steep decline in quarterly units and a gradual decline in overall subscribers, which at around 73 million, is the last of the growing, positive metrics for RIM," Blair wrote in a research note to clients this week. "We continue to see a mass exodus away from the BlackBerry platform in the consumer segment, in the enterprise, and in government, and there is nothing that will stave off this decline in 2012."
For more:
- see this Reuters article
- see this Bloomberg article
- see this Globe and Mail article
- see this AllThingsD article
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