RIM's fading fast; BlackBerry shipments fall behind Samsung and HTC reckons analyst Horace Dediu

RIM has been in trouble for years so its poor financials for Q2 FY12 aren't a surprise. 

What has been a surprise, however, according to market analyst Horace Dediu, is that the company continued to maintain its smartphone market share. 

At least, until now. 

In Q2, shipments of handsets (10.6 million) and BlackBerry's PlayBook (200,000) dropped heavily.

As Dediu points out, while sales of the firm's handsets actually outnumbered shipments 13.7 million units there's little for RIM to cheer about.

Slipping down life

"In terms of the competition, 10.6 million units is less than half what Apple or Samsung sold in its prior quarter," he says in his latest entry.

"It's also less than what HTC sold. RIM’s volume rank will likely go to fifth place as a smartphone vendor."

Dediu reports BlackBerry volume has fallen 11 percent year on year, and is also down 18 percent sequentially the second quarter in a row where shipments have fallen back, despite the launch of new product ranges such as BlackBerry 7 and PlayBook in 2011.

A matter of time

As a result, Dediu deduces RIM's smartphone share could slip to single digits once its competitors' shipment figures are made public, based on the smartphone market's 77 percent average quarterly growth rate.

The company's profitability is down, too, dropping from 21 percent to 13 percent.

"The company did incur some one-time charges for recent layoffs, but even without that charge, the margins would be around 16 percent," adds Dediu. "This is most alarming."

What he finds really interesting, however, is that despite the competition from iOS and Android, it's taken so long for RIM and Nokia to be significantly impacted in terms of shipped devices. 

"In retrospect, you can say that Nokia’s pivot was triggered by its public execution of Symbian, but that assumes that it was preventable - which we know is not the case," concluded Dediu.

"For quite some time RIM seemed immune to competitive pressure. We all were made fools as we called its imminent demise. Then, as Steve Jobs would say, boom!"

[source: asymco]