BlackBerry Q4 financials show 36 per cent year on year revenue dip

Company puts a brave face on with $2.7bn profit proving higher than expected

BlackBerry's eagerly-awaited fourth quarter results for fiscal year 2013 have arrived and they spell rather bleak news for the company, but not without a moderately silver lining.

The company achieved a revenue of $2.7bn, with a profit of $98m (£65m); apparently slightly higher than expected, but still two per cent less than last quarter, and representing a fairly catastrophic 36 per cent fall when compared to this time last year, at the end of Q4 2012.

During the quarter, BlackBerry says it shipped six million smartphones (one million of which were sold in a job lot to electronics distributor Brightstar earlier this month) and 370,000 BlackBerry PlayBook tablets.

But a million Z10 sales in the UK wasn't enough to make up for a "tepid" US launch, which financial group Citigroup called "a big disappointment".

"We have implemented numerous changes at BlackBerry over the past year and those changes have resulted in the company returning to profitability in the fourth quarter," Thorsten Heins, president and CEO, offered.

"With the launch of BlackBerry 10, we have introduced the newest and what we believe to be the most innovative mobile computing platform in the market today. Customers love the device and the user experience, and our teams and partners are now focused on getting those devices into the hands of BlackBerry consumer and enterprise customers."

To this end, the company has said it will be "increasing its marketing investment" in Q1 of next year - not a bad idea, Computing would suggest, as the enterprise-focused sell that seems to have pervaded the touchscreen-based Z10's debut seems a counterproductive move when the phone had so much consumer-based, BYOD potential.

With the qwerty keyboard-based Q10 still due to hit the UK streets in late April, it will be interesting to see if BlackBerry pushes the more familiar type-friendly shell to the old faithful BlackBerry fans, or makes a more concerted push to differentiate the brand from the Apples and Samsungs of this world.