It is a critical setback for RIM, which is struggling to compete with old phone technology in a highly competitive market. After losing dominance of the smartphone market to Apple’s iPhone and phones using Google’s Android operating system, RIM has staked its future on the BlackBerry 10 line of phones. But they had previously encountered delays in its release date, which along with other issues resulted in its co-chief executives giving up management of the company in January.
The latest setback, which was announced along with a $518 million loss in the company’s first quarter, increased doubts among analysts and investors about RIM’s future.
The company also announced that it would cut about 5,000 of its 16,500 employees, raising additional concerns that a drop in morale and defections by employees working on BlackBerry 10 could lead to further delays.
“I don’t know if they can turn it around,” Ehud Gelblum, an analyst with Morgan Stanley, said in an interview on Thursday. “I’d love to see it but there are some cases that are lost causes.”
Charles Golvin, an analyst with Forrester Research, said that the delay meant that the BlackBerry 10 phones would arrive after the anticipated release of a new iPhone, more phones based on the Windows 8 operating system from Microsoft as well as updated Android phones.
That, he said, will make it extremely difficult for RIM to generate interest in its new line.
RIM’s stock plummeted more than 14.5 percent in after-hours trading after the release of its quarterly results. The stock had closed at $9.13 a share in earlier regular trading.
At several recent public events, Thorsten Heins, who became RIM’s chief executive in January, said that the development of the new phones was on schedule and they would be available for the important holiday shopping season.
During a conference call with analysts Thursday, Mr. Heins said that the delay was not related to any problems with the technology of the new phones. Instead, he said that the company was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of software code it was now handling.
He did not explain why that management issue was not apparent earlier this year. RIM has a long history of missing deadlines and releasing products before they are fully finished.
“I will not deliver a product to market that will not meet the needs of our customers,” Mr. Heins said. He said that the new phones would still be competitive against coming models from other companies.
“There’s a lot of competition coming, that’s the nature of the consumer electronics business,” he said. “We’re not afraid of it.”
RIM’s loss, of about 99 cents a share, compares with a profit of $695 million, or $1.33 a share, in the same quarter a year ago.
Revenue fell by 43 percent to $2.8 billion from $4.9 billion in its first quarter last year.
While the delay in the new phones was a surprise, the weak financial results were expected. Although RIM has stopped issuing predictions for its financial results, it warned investors in late May that it was likely to report an operating loss for the quarter.
For several months, some financial analysts have been privately skeptical about RIM’s ability to survive or even to find a buyer for its assets. Several of them began openly expressing their concerns in advance of the quarterly earnings statement.
RIM is currently conducting a strategic review which includes everything from licensing the BlackBerry 10 software to selling all or part of the company. Mr. Heins has repeatedly said, however, that the company’s best hope remains cutting costs and successfully introducing the BlackBerry 10 phones.
There is little to indicate that anyone is seriously interested in buying RIM. Facebook and Amazon are interested in making phones, and it is unclear what attraction a phone maker with software problems would hold. As Google and, more recently, Microsoft have shown, those companies do not necessarily need to buy a hardware maker to enter the market.
RIM’s loss included a $326 million write-down of good will, the value assigned to intangibles such as its trademarks and customers’ perception of its products. With that write-down, the company now assigns no value for good will. The company will not discuss the value of its patents.
Sales of BlackBerry smartphones have slowed significantly. RIM said it shipped 7.8 million BlackBerry smartphones in the quarter, a third less than the 11.2 million smartphones it shipped in the first quarter a year ago. Adding to that problem, the company said that it was selling more lower-priced phones than in the past and that it has been forced to give wireless carriers and other sellers payments to sell BlackBerrys at a discount.
Despite the large loss and the rapid decline of its business, RIM is not in imminent financial danger. The company had about $2.2 billion in cash at the end of the quarter and expects to be able to maintain that level in the current quarter through spending cuts. It also has no debt and unused lines of credit that it said were currently being renegotiated.