RIM's Playbook and smartphone sales plummet

CANADIAN MOBILE MAKER Research in Motion (RIM) has seen its Playbook and smartphone sales plummet, the Blackberry maker's second quarter results have revealed.

The firm shipped just 200,000 Blackberry Playbooks in its second quarter, down from 500,000 in in the first quarter. RIM also saw smartphone sales drop by just under three million to 10.6 million, quarter-on-quarter.

Analysts have warned that RIM is losing market share much faster than expected, according to Reuters.

"The North American market share losses persist and we believe this trend is starting to spread to international markets, starting with slow signs already in UK," Sanford Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu wrote in a note to clients.

Analysts at National Bank Financial said it isn't just the Playbook that is causing RIM to lose money, but also the lower margins associated with the firm's low cost prepay handsets.

"Our view is the company is garnering lower profitability on its service revenue, which is the monthly infrastructure fee charged to carriers based on the number of active BlackBerry subscribers," National Bank analysts said as they downgraded the stock to "underperform" from "sector perform".

It looks like RIM's Playbook might be following in the footsteps of HP's Touchpad, which only sold well after having its price slashed.

Earlier this month, RIM cut the price of its Playbook tablet in the US in an apparent copycat tactic to HP's recent discount on its Touchpad.

Best Buy in the US has axed $150 off the price of the 64GB version of the Blackberry Playbook and has cut $50 off the prices of the 16GB and 32GB models.

RIM has also suffered from a lack of network support for its Playbook in the US, where it has failed to secure a major network deal. A planned deal with Sprint fell through last month, which must have been another disappointment for the Canadian company. µ