John Paczkowski

Recent Posts by John Paczkowski

Well, Whaddya Know — RIM’s Subscriber Base Isn’t in Decline

After a brutal, unceasing beating that has dragged it to nine-year lows, Research In Motion’s stock price is on the rise again. On Tuesday, RIM shares, which had been sunk deep in the mud for a while now, closed up 5 percent at $6.60.

The reason? A rare bit of good news in an otherwise bleak landscape of tablet disappointments, missed BlackBerry 10 deadlines, leadership shake-ups and layoffs.

During his BlackBerry Jam Americas keynote, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins said the company managed to add about two million subscribers to its BlackBerry service in its most recent quarter. It had about 78 million when it reported fiscal first-quarter earnings in late June. Now it has some 80 million.

And that’s great news for investors who had begun to fear that RIM’s subscriber additions are leveling out and might even decline for the first time this quarter. The caveat here is that these additions are probably occurring in emerging markets, one of RIM’s few growth areas. And they’re being driven by some pretty aggressive subsidies, which may cause the average selling price for BlackBerrys to drop. The BlackBerry’s ASP hasn’t exactly been stable recently, so further volatility is a danger.

RIM will report second-quarter earnings on Thursday after market close. Analysts are expecting a loss of 45 cents a share, the company’s third consecutive loss.

Twitter’s Tanking

December 30, 2013 at 6:49 am PT

2013 Was a Good Year for Chromebooks

December 29, 2013 at 2:12 pm PT

BlackBerry Pulls Latest Twitter for BB10 Update

December 29, 2013 at 5:58 am PT

Apple CEO Tim Cook Made $4.25 Million This Year

December 28, 2013 at 12:05 pm PT

Latest Video

View all videos »

Search »

The problem with the Billionaire Savior phase of the newspaper collapse has always been that billionaires don’t tend to like the kind of authority-questioning journalism that upsets the status quo.

— Ryan Chittum, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review about the promise of Pierre Omidyar’s new media venture with Glenn Greenwald