Blackberry maker RIM rings up record smartphone sales

Canada's Research In Motion, maker of the popular Blackberry, said Thursday that it sold a record number of smartphones in the first quarter of its fiscal year.

The Waterloo, Ontario-based company said it shipped 11.2 million devices in the quarter that ended on May 29 compared with 10.5 million units the previous quarter.

RIM posted a quarterly net profit of 769 million dollars, up 19.5 percent compared with the same quarter a year ago. Revenue grew 24 percent to 4.24 billion dollars.

The results came in slightly under RIM's revenue forecast and shares in the company were trading 4.61 percent lower at 55.88 dollars in after-hours electronic trading.

The Canadian handset maker said it added 4.9 million Blackberry subscribers during the quarter, about the same number as during the previous quarter, for a total of 46 million.

"We continue to be focused on growing our business globally," RIM co-chief executive Jim Balsillie said in a statement.

"We believe that the range of exciting new Blackberry products being released in the coming months will create significant opportunities to accelerate RIM's growth."

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that RIM is developing a touchscreen smartphone with a slide-out keyboard and a tablet device to serve as a larger-screen companion to the BlackBerry.

The newspaper said the moves are designed to prevent the BlackBerry from losing more ground to Apple's iPhone and iPad and mobile devices running Google's Android operating system.

RIM's touchscreen smartphone, the Blackberry Storm, has failed to match the popularity of the iPhone, whose latest version, the iPhone 4 hit stores around the world on Thursday.

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said Wednesday that more than 160,000 Android-powered devices were being sold worldwide every day.