That's not entirely true now!

Their profits were down $125m the last quarter and down from $3.1b to $1.2b in the last year with people shifting to Android and the iphone. Shipments of BB's fell 21%!! They could go bust very easily and very quickly if they don't make the correct decision.

They aren't pulling right out of the consumer market but, it will only be the high end BB's available to consumers. Teenies using their phones just for BBM and barely topping up is what's killing them.

Nokia are also suffering a loss

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...2J01-M2DI4.DTL

A $1.2bn profit is a long way off bankruptcy. Many of the biggest blue chip companies in the world don't make profit at those level. At the moment the company assets are worth more than their share price which makes them a good prospect for takeover potentially. But bankruptcy, no.

Besides their net profit last financial year was $3.4bn. Thats about double the profit at HTC. Or about 25% less than Tesco.

Ok, so sales are slowing, but they have a completely new platform shipping later this year. They have a lot of corporate customers, a lot of government users (for whom no other handsets are approved due to security restrictions). And as already stated they are the fastest growing vendor in a number of developing economies.

RIM shipped 11.3 million handsets in 2011 Q4. Apple shipped 17 million iPhones in the same quarter.

This is a very misleading piece of information. Unit numbers give a very warped view. How much profit per unit do RIM make? How much profit do Apple make per iPhone?

I think you'll find the profit for those 11.3 million BlackBerry smartphones is nowhere near the profit made from the 17 million iPhones.

They still made $3.4bn profit last financial year!

The handset numbers were to indicate that not everybody is leaving BlackBerry, or that they are going under because 'nobody buys BBs anymore'. 11.3 million handsets is a lot to ship out in 1 quarter. It shows that people are still choosing BBs.

Joe, I think you're wasting your time.

These Apple Fans don't like hearing any good about any other handset than iPhones.

I/we know BlackBerry's aren't as crap as people on here try to make out.

Stiggles is hardly an iPhone fanboy. He's got one but he's Android through and through! Just because you think BlackBerry is old news and not keeping up, doesn't make you a fanboy of the competition.

It would be interesting to know where BlackBerry made their profit, because I'd suggest it's from BlackBerry service - the server side of the business from existing clients. There's no way on god's green earth they made billions from handsets.

I thought that as well until I tried swype on the android.

Thought would miss the keypad. Not at all.

Sent me Blackberry curve 8520 back to orange they gave £40 back on the Orange Recycle. Most you will get now.

Only to my worst enemies.

Hi dory,I had a bb pearl 3G not a qwerty keypad,good for me tho up till 2 days ago.Its now discontinued,I loved it for a while but it then got laggy,freezing and got an annoying rotating black onsreen clock that stops everything until you reboot it.,including phone conversations!(I have read not everyone has this tho),I even got an O2 Guru to fix it but same after a few weeks.I put up with it for a bit! I swore I would never have an android touch screen(I tried galaxy s2 for a week,didnt like it,too big and ate up my data! So I returned it)...Anyway I now have Sony Mini Pro it has a physical pullout keypad and a touchscreen one,It is an android but it is the best choice I have made.Please try one,you might like it.mine is black with O2 pay and go,£129,not too expensive .Hope I helped a bit!

If you go for the Sony Ericsson (and it is a good choice) be careful you get the Experia Mini Pro, not the original one,the X10 Mini Pro. They look very similar, but the better,newer one has a Snapdragon Processor, making it much faster. Alot of people complained about the slowness of the X10.