Stocks fall as confidence turns soft

New devices may not save company: analysts

NEW YORK • Research In Motion Ltd., slated to introduce its new BlackBerry 10 product lineup later this week, fell 7.8 per cent on concern that the phones won’t reverse the company’s decline in smartphone sales.

The shares fell to $16.18 at the close in New York, the biggest decline in more than a month. Before the drop, the stock had climbed almost 50 per cent this year, fuelled by optimism that the BlackBerry 10 can put the company on the path to recovery.

“Everything we’ve seen suggests they are catching up to the competition, but there’s nothing here that says this is why you need this device more than anything else,” said Jan Dawson, chief telecommunications analyst with Ovum Ltd.

RIM CEO Thorsten Heins will unveil new BlackBerry 10 phones Jan. 30 in New York.

The new product line is RIM’s attempt to maintain its current customers and win back people who have switched to Apple Inc.’s iPhone and Samsung Electronics Co.’s Galaxy, which runs on Google Inc.’s popular Android platform.

Apple and Android phones represented 92 per cent of smartphone shipments in the fourth quarter, according to a report today from Strategy Analytics. Waterloo, Ont.-based RIM’s BlackBerry subscribers numbered 79 million at the end of the last quarter, down about 1 million from the previous three-month period.

“The new phones will give them a good year in 2013 selling mostly to the BlackBerry faithful, but that is a shrinking niche of customers,” said Dawson.

The stock has posted declines of at least 6 per cent 10 times in the past year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.