Thursday, March 31, 2011

UBS (UBS) Says RIM (RIMM) May Be Losing North American Subscribers

Research in Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) may be losing subscribers in North America, said UBS (NYSE:UBS) analyst Amitabh Passi, citing information in the annual report of the company.

Passi said that net subscribers in the North American market have “either declined quite precipitously in the quarter, or, even more surprisingly, could have turned negative.”

Particularly pointed out was the revelation that 54.6% of BlackBerry users came from outside North America in the quarter, while modeling 6 million net subscriber additions during that time.

Also noted by Passi is RIM saying it is reducing its consumer access to its network operations facilities at a lower fee to carriers. If that was lowered by 10 percent for that monthly subscriber fee, it would lower EPS of Research in Motion by about 50 cents, concluded Passi.

To reach the EPS projection of $7.50, Passi said Rim will have to have a solid response from users from its new product line like Curve Touch, Storm 3, and Torch 2, as well as the Playbook tablet now on sale.

RIM was trading at $56.23, falling $0.80, or 1.40 percent, as of 1:10 PM EDT.

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