BlackBerry’s future may be clearer with latest earnings report

Beleaguered BlackBerry is scheduled to report quarterly earnings before the open Friday, with revenue projected to fall 44% from the year-earlier period. It would be the eighth double-digit drop in the last nine quarters.

BlackBerry on Friday posted its fiscal third-quarter results and just as everyone expected, things have gotten substantially worse since for BlackBerry since last year’s November quarter. The only question now is whether things are bottoming out ahead of a miraculous John Chen-led turnaround or if the end is near. Leading into Friday morning’s earnings results, analysts were expecting a loss of -$0.44 per share on $1.596 billion in revenue, which is down sharply from BlackBerry’s loss of -$0.22 per share on sales totaling $2.7 billion in the fiscal third quarter last year. The numbers are now in, and things were even worse than the Street was expecting, as BlackBerry’s quarterly loss widened to -$0.67 per share on $1.2 billion in revenue.