BlackBerry's Revenue Decline Since 2012 Is Depressing

BlackBerry Ltd BBRY once upon a time held a dominant market position in the smartphone market as it was an early pioneer. Today, the company ranks near the bottom in nearly every metric. BlackBerry reported mixed first quarter results on Thursday as the company's earnings per share of $0.00 exceeded Wall Street's expectations for an $0.08 per share loss but revenue of $424 million fell short of the $470.9 million analysts were expecting. GAAP net loss for the quarter was $670 million compared to a net income of $73 million in the same quarter a year ago. Depressing Figures BlackBerry's first quarter revenue has been collapsing over the past years as the once mighty Canadian-based smartphone maker has fallen out of touch with what the market expects in a smartphone. Back in the first quarter of 2012, BlackBerry posted revenue of $4.9 billion. The following year, revenue for the quarter dipped to $2.8 billion but rebounded in 2014 to $3.1 billion. In 2015 BlackBerry's first quarter revenue fell below the $1 billion and read $966 million and then dropped to $658 million in 2016. At its peak, BlackBerry was overseeing nearly $20 billion in annual revenue and its stock traded above $200 per share. Things were going so well that the company's former co-CEO Jim Balsillie had plans to personally buy a National Hockey League franchise and move it to Hamilton, Ontario. A lot has changed over the past decade. According to Statista, BlackBerry's market share peaked above 20 percent in the late 2000s. At the end of the first quarter 2016 it stood at just 0.2 percent. It shouldn't come as a surprise to investors that shares of BlackBerry have lost more than 25 percent since the start of 2016, more than 75 percent over the past 5 years and nearly 90 percent over the past 10 years.