The news marks the low point in another lousy quarter for RIM. Although it's still making money with $5.17 billion in revenue, that's down from $5.49 billion the year before.
Looking at profits, however, the picture gets darker. The company recorded a profit of $265 million compared with $911 million last year. The current quarter took some big one-time hits, though, the largest being a $485 million write-down on the PlayBook.
Many of the company's tablets went unsold this quarter, even after deep discounting. RIM shipped just 150,000 tablets over the entire quarter, down from 200,000 the previous quarter. For comparison, Apple reported selling (not shipping) 300,000 iPads in the first day of its release in 2010.
Despite the PlayBook being widely seen as the company's albatross, RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said during an earnings call that RIM is "completely committed to the PlayBook," and that a coming software update will elevate it to something special.
"We still view the tablet market in its infancy and it's rapidly evolving," he said. "We know there's a demand for the [PlayBook], and people are enjoying the experience. The software upgrade will be substantial."
RIM plans to release version 2.0 of the PlayBook software early in the new year. The update will finally bring a native email client to the device (users currently need to tether it to a BlackBerry phone to read email). It will also be able to interface with BlackBerry servers, as well as those from other companies.
On the phone side, RIM plans to push forward with aggressive marketing of its current crop of BlackBerry 7 phones in the period before BlackBerry 10 arrives. Its main target: first-time smartphone buyers.