RIM slashes forecasts as profits drop, shares plummet 15 percent

Research in Motion has been forced to reduce its forecasts for this quarter after profits and revenue dropped in Q2, resulting in a 15% drop in the Canadian smartphone vendor’s shares on Thursday, Reuters reports.

With Google and Apple experiencing huge growth in the smartphone market, the Blackberry maker is due to release new models to compete with the iPhone and powerful Android smartphones but has warned they might not hit US stores until late August, potentially missing the lucrative back-to-school season.

The company is currently in a transition phase where it is working to release new QNX-powered BlackBerry devices, the same operating system that is featured in the PlayBook, but they will only be released after RIM launches devices powered by an updated version of the BlackBerry OS.

Following Apple’s WWDC keynote, the Canadian smartphone vendor’s stock fell below $37 – the lowest level since 2007, dropping more than 3% on the Toronto Stock Exchange to close at $36.92, experiencing a similar drop on Wall Street, closing at $37.82 after a drop of 2.8%.

Analysts had pegged RIM’s shipments at more than 14 million but a delay has forced RIM to slash its estimates to between 11 million and 12. 5 million smartphones in the current quarter. This lead to the company’s shares to fall more than 15 percent to $29.84 after the closing bell in the US.