RIM's earnings double!

Once again the Blackberry maker, Research in Motion has provided investors a solid quarter that came in line with Wall Street's estimates. The wireless device maker (RIMM) issued a forecast for the current quarter that was ahead of analysts' estimates.

For the quarter ended Sept. 1, the company reported earnings of $287.7 million, or 50 cents a share, compared with earnings of $140.2 million, or 25 cents a share, for the same period the previous year.

Revenue surged to $1.37 billion compared with $658.5 million last year.

Analysts were expecting earnings of 50 cents a share on revenue of $1.36 billion, according to consensus forecasts from Thomson Financial.

The company said about 1.45 million subscribers were added during the quarter. More than 3 million devices were shipped during the period.

In a conference call, company officers highlighted strong sales of RIM's line of Pearl smart phones as well as the BlackBerry Curve. Both are devices that the company has targeted to the so-called "prosumer" market, meaning high-end consumers not typically picked up by RIM's strong corporate business.

"This outperformance was driven by a strong product cycle perp as well as the diversification of our user base across multiple geographies and multiple market segments," CEO Jim Balsillie said during the call.

For the current quarter, the company said it expects revenue to come in between $1.6 billion and $1.67 billion. Wall Street had been expecting revenue of $1.52 billion for the period, according to Thomson estimates.

Earnings for the quarter are expected to be between 59 cents to 63 cents per share, ahead of the 55 cents a share predicted by analysts.

"The quarter was only in line, but guidance was very strong," said Rob Sanderson of American Technology Research. "In addition to better subscribers and revenue, they must be showing good operating leverage to get to the 63 cents at the high end of [expected] EPS."

Expectations are high for RIM, which has seen its share price more than double so far this year. The stock is now trading in the $100 range -- an all-time high and in line with Wall Street's median price target.

RIM stock jumped in the final minutes of trading Thursday ahead of the earnings report, thanks to bullish expectations and rumors of a new touch-screen device in development similar to Apple's popular iPhone.

However the company seemed to have learned a trick or two from Apple in refusing to comment on new products in development.

• The key to Rim's tremendous growth is the entrance to the consumer market, up until recently Blackberry's were mainly used in the business market headsets, now as RIM is gradually entering the high end of the consumer market it enjoys such growth.

• Though I think RIM stock price is pretty high now I'd recommend people to buy Rim shares on any pull-backs in the stock price, as their poised for more growth as it conquers the consumer market, and captures market share in the Smartphone market.