RIM not RIP

Financial results announced yesterday show a healthy disregard for all the ghoulish speculation about Research In Motion. Revenue during the last three months was up 31 per cent while earnings per share rose 76 per cent. There are now more than 50 million BlackBerry users, up 56 per cent year-over-year. And all this during an economic downturn that has confounded many companies.

To be sure, BlackBerry has lost some market share. In the increasingly competitive U.S. BlackBerry was down two points, but so was Apple. Droid, in third place, jumped five points.

For investors, it’s been a good week. Share price has risen more than 10 per cent since Monday morning, including the after hours trading on Thursday. I can only hope the young man I overheard last weekend saying he was going to short RIM (see previous post) did not.

RIM’s results bring to mind a famous Mark Twain quote: “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”