Hitting the reset button is harder than it looks.
BlackBerry, in the middle of trying to save its floundering business, surprised observers this afternoon by giving an unexpected snapshot of its fiscal-second quarter results. Most worryingly, BlackBerry expects to book an operating loss of $950 million to $995 million, nearly three times the size that analysts predicted. Moreover, it says sales should be $1.6 billion, which is also far below Wall Street estimates.
In response to the awful numbers, BlackBerry shares were halted, then fell by 20% after the stock resumed trading. Five minutes before the closing bell, BlackBerry was down 17.8% to $8.64 a share.
BlackBerry also revealed plans to fire 4,500 workers in a move to halve costs by 2015. Not that there's much for them to do. BlackBerry says it shipped 3.7 million smartphones last quarter, less than the 6.8 million from a quarter earlier.
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BlackBerry was the original smartphone pioneer with immense first-mover advantage–but has been surpassed in recent years by Apple Apple's iPhone and Google Google's Android phones. Under new CEO Thorsten Heins, the company has tried to release new handsets that better mimic its most successful competitors, but the efforts have mostly fallen flat.
Reach Abram Brown at abrown@forbes.com.
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