RIM to launch PlayBook internationally
Research In Motion (RIM) (TSE:RIM) (NASDAQ:RIMM) announced Friday it will launch its BlackBerry PlayBook in 16 countries outside of North America, including the U.K., the United Arab Emirates, Italy, Hong Kong, Australia and India, among others.
The international launch comes on the heels of a drop in the company's first quarter outlook and a disappointing launch of the PlayBook in the US and Canada.
RIM said it expects its diluted earnings per share (EPS) for the first quarter to be in the range of $1.30 to $1.37, after having originally expected earnings of between $1.47 and $1.55 per share.
The company said it will release its anticipated first quarter financial report on June 16.
The smartphone manufacturer said the revision was due to lower-than-expected shipment volumes of its BlackBerry smartphones, and a market shift to more inexpensive handsets. Revenues are now expected to be between $5.2 billion and $5.6 billion.
RIM also said shipments of its BlackBerry PlayBook, which launched in April in North America to compete with Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad 2, remained as projected and were unaffected by the March earthquake in Japan.
In early May, however, the Waterloo, Ontario-based company took another hit when it was forced to recall 1,000 of its PlayBooks that were shipped with a faulty operating system.
While RIM replaced each PlayBook, many of which had not yet reached consumers, confidence in the company, along with its share price, continued to drop, hitting lows on the TSX not seen since 2006.
With its PlayBook launch overseas, where BlackBerry devices still lead the smartphone market, RIM, whose stock on the TSX was trading at $35.94 per share, may still be able to resuscitate itself from its decline.
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