BlackBerry has just announced its quarterly earnings for the first quarter of its fiscal year 2018, and things are looking good. The company posted a profit of $671 million or $1.23 per share, and that is likely largely thanks to the courts ruling in its favor versus Qualcomm, which awarded it $940 million during the quarter. However, revenue did drop in the quarter, going from $400 million a year ago to $235 million in the first quarter. The previous quarter, revenue was $286 million. Interestingly enough, more than half of BlackBerry’s revenue comes from North America, 59% in Q4 FY 2017 and 58.1% in this past quarter. With EMEA being its next biggest region.
The company has been focusing on enterprise software recently, even closing down its hardware division in favor of focusing on software. BlackBerry noted that it had 3,000 enterprise customer orders in this past quarter, which is down from 3,500 in the previous quarter. BlackBerry opted not to announce the number of handsets it had sold. In 2017, it sold half a million and 2016 it was 1.1 million. Seeing as BlackBerry has only announced one new smartphone in 2017 – the KEYone – it’s likely not much better or higher than its 2017 numbers. BlackBerry is starting to turn itself around, after all it did go from a $670 million loss a year ago to a $671 million profit in this past quarter, which is definitely impressive.
BlackBerry’s CEO, John Chen, noted that he believes that company has made massive strides in some key areas like the Enterprise of Things and Cybersecurity. It was last year that Chen announced that the company would cease its hardware operations, and then signed a deal with TCL for making its future smartphones. Obviously the DTEK50 and DTEK60 were made by TCL, but the BlackBerry KEYone was the first phone that was basically entirely designed by BlackBerry and then mass produced by TCL – the company behind the Alcatel brand. Chen also noted that Qualcomm and NVIDIA are adopting BlackBerry’s QNX platform for the automotive industry, and it’ll be in a slew of future vehicles powering the infotainment systems and much more. Which is actually a huge win for BlackBerry as it gets them in more vehicles, and in front of more users.