BlackBerry Ltd’s (NASDAQ:BBRY) four biggest flops were named in a recent list by Bloomberg Ranx.
At number four is the BlackBerry Storm. The Storm was released by BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) in November 2008 after being launched September of that year. This was the Canadian company’s first attempt to directly take on the Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone. However, according to Bloomberg, the smartphone was plagued by buggy software and bad performance. As a result, it was panned by critics with noted New York Times writer David Pogue even calling it “The BlackBerry Dud,” the report said.
Clinching the third spot in this four-member list is the BlackBerry Playbook. This was the first BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) tablet and was meant to be its answer to the popular Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPad. However, it was released in April 2011 after a launch in September 2010 without even having email. By the third quarter of 2012, only 150,000 units were sold by the company resulting in a $485 million charge for unsold inventory.
The second device on this list is the BlackBerry Q10. With a swanky unveiling featuring Alicia Keys, BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) hoped that the Q10, described in the Bloomberg report as a qwerty equivalent of the Z10, would revive its floundering sales. However, sales were described as “dismal” and the smartphone did not sell as well as the company hoped.
The biggest flop, however, is the BlackBerry Z10, Bloomberg Ranx reveals. According to the report, the all-touchscreen device was hyped as the company’s “savior” but ended up failing to redeem the device-maker. Only 2.7 million units of the smartphone were sold which was way below the 3.6-million-unit sales estimate. After the flop which was the Z10, BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) stock plunged 28%, the most it has declined since the dot-com crash. The Z10 also resulted in a $1-billion write-off for the company only 8 months after its release in January last year.
Nonetheless, it is noteworthy to mention that BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) reported a better than expected loss for its recently reported first quarter 2015 performance. The company reported a net income of $23 million, or 4 cents per share, on revenue of approximately $966 million. The device-maker’s adjusted loss was $60 million, or 11 cents per share, smaller than the expected 27 cents per share loss anticipated by analysts.
The company’s CEO John Chen, recently said that he is not actively seeking a company to acquire the once-mighty phone-maker and that he believes that the company is very viable and on track to reach its goals in the near-future.
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