CANADIAN PHONE MAKER Blackberry posted its fiscal first quarter 2014 financial results on Friday, although it kept quiet on Blackberry 10 (BB10) device sales.
Blackberry revealed that its revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2014 topped £3.1 billion, up 15 percent compared to the previous quarter's $2.7bn. However, the firm reported a loss of $84m on the quarter, compared to a $94m profit in the prior quarter.
Blackberry hasn't provided any numbers on how many BB10 smartphones it has sold, despite this having been the first quarter that the Blackberry Q10 and Z10 smartphones were available. However, the firm said that it sold 6.8 million smartphones in total during the quarter, up from six million in the previous quarter.
Thorsten Heins, CEO and president of Blackberry didn't shed much light on BB10 sales, although his comment that the firm is still "in the early stages" of the mobile operating system's launch is unlikely to instill confidence among Wall Street analysts.
He said, "During the first quarter, we continued to focus our efforts on the global roll out of the Blackberry 10 platform. We are still in the early stages of this launch, but already, the Blackberry 10 platform and Blackberry Enterprise Service 10 are proving themselves to customers to be very secure, flexible and dynamic mobile computing solutions.
"Over the next three quarters, we will be increasing our investments to support the roll out of new products and services, and to demonstrate that BlackBerry has established itself as a leading and vibrant player in next generation mobile computing solutions for both consumer and enterprise customers."
Blackberry didn't seem very confident, saying in its outlook statement that "the smartphone market remains highly competitive," making it difficult to estimate units, revenue and levels of profitability".
Dr Roland Klingebiel, strategy professor at Warwick Business School has commented on the numbers, and says Blackberrys' enterprise server is the only reason the firm hasn't fully "crashed and burned."
He said, "Business clients have hesitated to abandon the secure working environment and efficient integration that BES offers, even if the BlackBerry handset experience was lagging.
"Whatever little time there is left before the last corporate clients abandon the Blackberry package, the company should use this time to refocus on its core strengths in BES, potentially at the expense of abandoning their device portfolio."
Blackberry, unsurprisingly given its lack of confidence, said it expects to also post a loss in the second quarter.