We may soon be saying R-I-P to R-I-M, the maker of the once beloved BlackBerry smartphone. After reducing their initial profit forecast roughly two months ago, Research in Motion announced its first quarter financial earnings results yesterday which were almost $1 billion lower than expected. Although RIM managed to ship 13.2 million BlackBerry devices and 500,000 BlackBerry Playbook tablets during the quarter, the discouraging news of the drop in profit and revenue caused shares in the company to fall 14 percent in after-hours trading last night. Now, Research in Motion is going to cut costs through “headcount reductions”… meaning layoffs are on the way.

RIM is quickly fading into oblivion behind the new giants in the business – Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. Jarislowsky Fraser Ltd., Research in Motion’s sixth-largest investor, just revealed that it would be dumping all of its 10.2 million shares in the company, with the chairman of the investment group leaving this ominous quote,” We are on the way out. The stake has been reduced by more than 50% or even more… They are resting on their laurels … Steve Jobs is a much better marketer than RIM.”

So what is RIM’s main problem? Delays in production… and the fact that their technology is not keeping up with competitors’. No new products will be released by the company during the summer until August, the latest BlackBerry OS 7.0 update coming out won’t even work for most of the current models, and who honestly wants to buy a PlayBook over another tablet?

Co-CEO Jim Balsillie announced in a press release:

“Fiscal 2012 has gotten off to a challenging start. The slowdown we saw in the first quarter is continuing into Q2, and delays in new product introductions into the very late part of August is leading to a lower than expected outlook in the second quarter… RIM’s business is profitable and remains solid overall with growing market share in numerous markets around the world and a strong balance sheet with almost $3 billion in cash. We believe that with the new products scheduled for launch in the next few months and realigning our cost structure, RIM will see strong profit growth in the latter part of fiscal 2012.”

With investors’ confidence already shaken, this statement does not provide much reassurance, and the outlook is looking very grim for a company that was once considered the world leader in the smartphone market.

Photo by darkscher via deviantART