Dear BlackBerry: What Does "Best Day Ever" Really Mean?

Telecom & Wireless

Published: February 6, 2013 2:32 pm

Last Updated: February 6, 2013 2:37 pm

BlackBerry (NASDAQ: BBRY) has just issued an odd press release via MarketWire on Wednesday. The claim is that BlackBerry’s new phone launch was the best day ever in Canada. It also talks up three-times its best performance in the first week in the United Kingdom. We will leave it up to you to decide what this means as far as units sold and what it means financially to the company now formally known as Research in Motion or RIM.

The company said,

“In Canada, yesterday was the best day ever for the first day of a launch of a new BlackBerry smartphone. In fact, it was more than 50% better than any other launch day in our history in Canada,” said Thorsten Heins, President & CEO of BlackBerry. “In the UK, we have seen close to three times our best performance ever for the first week of sales for a BlackBerry smartphone.”

With the US launch being effectively delayed, it is no wonder that so many analysts are mixed and looking for the real bias ahead. Comments this morning from Canaccord Genuity said, “Our U.K. store surveys post the recent launch of the Z10 smartphone indicated solid initial sales. However, limited initial supply was cited as the reason for early post-launch stockouts at some carrier stores versus overwhelming demand. In fact, our surveys indicated most stores received less than 15 units and sold a majority of these units over a two- to three-day period, leading to initial stock-outs at a few stores and low inventory levels at others.” That firm maintained a $9.00 price target based upon the sum-of-the-parts.

BlackBerry was still named RIM on Monday of this week, but it was raised to “Buy” with a $22 price target at the time.

We have been reading much about the news on “being sold out” and it may not be quite as optimistic or as bullish as BlackBerry might want you to believe. That being said, it is at least better than a poke in the eye.

As a reminder, the Palm Treo faced sharp demand at its launch as well. Now Palm is not even a remnant operating system that alive even as an alternative for throwback fans.

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