Research in Motion’s Earnings Fall 71%

It was the latest, and perhaps most significant, setback in a string of product delays and missteps from the company.

The phones, which the company had been expected to start selling early next year, will replace RIM’s aging operating system with a new one known as BlackBerry 10. The company said the change would give them performance and capabilities more like Apple’s iPhone or phones using the Android operating system from Google. Mike Lazaridis, a co-chief executive of the company, said the delay in the new phones came from the company’s decision to use a more compact and power efficient microprocessor that would not be available from its manufacturer until the middle of 2012.

The phones are widely seen as RIM’s last hope for reversing the drastic decline of the BlackBerry in the United States. BlackBerrys accounted for just 9 percent of the United States’ smartphone market in the third quarter of this year, compared with 24 percent during the same period a year ago, according to market research firm Canalys.

The delay was announced during a conference call for the company’s third quarter results. Research in Motion’s third quarter net income fell 71 percent, hurt by giveaway pricing for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and costs related to a global service interruption in October. The company said Thursday that its net income was $265 million, or 51 cents a share, plunging from $911 million, or $1.74 a share, in the same time period last year. The smartphone maker, which is based in Waterloo, Ontario, also said that its revenue during the quarter was $5.2 billion, a 6 percent drop from the year before.

RIM signaled that the current quarter would bring further financial disappointment. Growing inventories of unsold BlackBerrys at wholesalers and retailers led the company to forecast that it would ship only 11 million to 12 million phones in the current period, compared with 14.1 million phones in the third quarter. The holiday buying season has historically provided an improvement in RIM’s sales.

Last week, RIM was forced to change the name of the new phone’s operating system from BBX after losing an early round of a trademark battle.

Jim Balsillie, the company’s other chief executive, said that until the BlackBerry 10 phones arrive, RIM would start spending heavily on advertising and other promotions in the United States to attract buyers for the BlackBerry 7 phones, which were introduced during the last quarter.

“RIM’s U.S. business is particularly weak,” Mr. Balsillie said during a conference call for analysts. The company reported that the United States accounted for 20 percent of its sales during the third quarter, down from 27 percent in the previous quarter.

Both executives continued to praise the BlackBerry 7 phones, which use an updated version of the company’s aging operating system. At least one analyst on the call openly expressed skepticism about RIM’s ability to increase sales of those phones in the United States with advertising, given their poor sales so far. RIM declined to offer specific sales figures for BlackBerry 7 models.

The continued bad financial news was expected. Early this month, RIM announced that it would not meet its expected targets.

Much of RIM’s problems stem from its efforts to spark lackluster PlayBook sales by selling the units at well below the cost of manufacture. The company has dropped the price of a basic model to $200 from $500, and it took a $485 million write down during the last quarter to account for the shortfall. It said on Thursday it would continue to discount the PlayBook and anticipated a gross profit margin of only 1 percent on the devices in this quarter.

Both chief executives acknowledged growing shareholder anger about the company’s performance and their management, and said they were cutting their salaries to $1 a year.

“Mike and I, as two of RIM’s largest shareholders, understand investor sentiment,” Mr. Balsillie said.

Adnaan Ahmad, an analyst with Berenberg Bank in London, said that the two executives needed to be even more candid about their company’s situation. “Every quarter it gets more painful to hear from these guys,” he said. “They’ve kept their heads in the sand.”

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