BlackBerry comeback looking bleak

A comeback attempt for Canada's formerly dominant smartphone maker, BlackBerry, is falling short, technology industry analysts said. BlackBerry share prices tumbled Friday when the company announced a quarterly loss of $84 million, The New York Times reported Saturday. "I can't imagine anyone is happy with BlackBerry performance except maybe BlackBerry competitors," technology industry analyst Jeff Kagan was quoted as telling the Los Angeles Times. "To tell you the truth, hopes are dimmed by this first-quarter performance." The loss occurred during the first full quarter in which the company featured its BlackBerry 10 operating system, symbolic of the company's turnaround efforts. The company said it shipped 6.8 million phones in the fiscal quarter that ended June 1. Numbers are not meeting expectations for the company, which at its peak had 55.3 percent of the U.S. market share in 2009. Apple, which overtook BlackBerry as the dominant player in the industry, now ships more phones in a week than BlackBerry did in three months, The New York Times said. The company formerly known as Research in Motion now claims 0.9 percent of the market share. BlackBerry said it lost $84 million, or 16 cents a share, on revenue of $3.1 billion in the quarter. Accounting for one-time charges, the company lost $67 million, or 13 cents. That's a far cry from the loss of $518 million, or 99 cents a share, on $2.8 billion in revenue the company posted in the same quarter of 2012. But analysts were expecting the latest quarter to show a profit of 8 cents a share on revenues of $3.37 billion, the Los Angeles Times reported. "For many, going into these earnings, it was seen as the end of the new beginning," said William Blair & Co. analyst Anil Doradia. "Now, coming out of the earnings, it looks like the beginning of the end."