BlackBerry results: 55% of Z10 buyers weren't using BB before

BlackBerry reported a good Q4 for the fiscal year 2013, with the company stating that it had sold nearly 1 million BlackBerry Z10 devices. The company shipped roughly 6 million smartphones in the quarter ended 2 March.

Net income in the quarter was $98 million, or 19 cents a share, compared with a year earlier profit of $9 million, or 2 cents a share. Revenue fell 36 percent to $2.7 billion, from $4.2 billion. Analysts surveyed by FactSet had expected $2.82 billion.

Here are some key take away facts from BlackBerry’s earnings call with investors:

• 55 percent of users who bought the Z10, were not BlackBerry users earlier but were using Android, iOS or Windows Phone.

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• Availability of BlackBerry Q10 will commence in April. The Q10 also runs on the latest BlackBerry 10 platform but unlike the Z10, this device has a keyboard.

• The company said that the US launch is meeting expectations but it is not exceeding sales like it did in Canada & UK.

• BlackBerry will also launch lower cost devices will later this year. These are likely to be launched in the September-October period. These will be key for India market since Z10 is very expensive and Q10 is also likely to be a premium range device.

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[caption id=“attachment_678051” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  BlackBerry Z10 in this file photo. Reuters[/caption]

• New BlackBerry 7 products will be launched in certain markets outside the US. Since BB is still selling reasonable numbers of BB7 devices in India, this would mean we should expect to see some new BB7 devices in India soon too.

• There is a possibility of licensing of BlackBerry 10 OS.

• Europe, Middle East and Africa accounted for 46 percent of revenue. UK grew 13 percent. North America was 22 percent of revenue, which is down from 24 percent in the previous quarter for 2011. BlackBerry’s US market declined, and represented only 14 percent of the sales. On the other hand, Canada grew 62 percent sequentially. As far as Asia Pacific is concerned the revenue was flat.

• Despite a drop in total units shipped (7 million last quarter versus 6 million this quarter), revenues remained the same, reflecting higher margins, 40 percent gross margin this quarter which is very strong.

• 31 petabytes of traffic goes through BlackBerry infrastructure every month.