When Research In Motion posted a 24 percent revenue jump for the company’s fourth fiscal quarter last week, much of Wall Street’s attention was centered on the surprising strength of the company’s Blackberry smartphone sales to consumers.
RIM added approximately 3.9 million net new BlackBerry subscriber accounts in the quarter ended Feb. 28, boosting the total BlackBerry subscriber base to more than 25 million, according to RIM Co-CEO James Balsillie.
“The strength of the BlackBerry net subscriber account additions in December was unprecedented, with many carriers hitting their highest level of Net activations ever and with channel and marketing support for BlackBerry products at an all-time high,” Balsillie said during a conference call with industry analysts.
Surprising Enterprise Strength
However, consumers weren’t the only ones snapping up RIM’s smartphones. The unsung hero in the company’s latest results was the continuing strong sales of Blackberry handsets to enterprises, which currently account for 30 percent of the company’s handset shipments. “RIM’s results are indicative that in the business environment the overall demand for smartphones is still pretty good,” said Lisa Pierce, an independent wireless industry analyst.
Pierce attributed the continuing robust business demand for Blackberry handsets and other smartphones in part to enterprise decisions made last year before the economic downturn became readily apparent. “Certainly in the corporate world a lot of the sales activity in the first quarter was the result of purchasing decisions that companies made last year,” Pierce noted.
However, Pierce also thinks that smartphone sales to businesses have remained robust because many enterprises see the merit in moving to corporate mobile policies, and that’s not expected to change any time soon. “If you are buying, say, a thousand devices, then it is cheaper to use them under a corporate-liable contract than as individual-liable devices,” Pierce said. “The move to corporate-liable plans is…