RIM's BlackBerry Winter

In September, the company predicted that it would earn 62 cents to 68 cents a share in the quarter on sales ranging from $540 million to $570 million.

In the same quarter last year, the company earned $90.4 million, or 46 cents a share, on sales of $365.9 million.

And Wall Street is looking for similarly healthy results in the company's fiscal fourth quarter. Analysts expect the company to earn 75 cents a share in the current period on $602.8 million in sales.

RIM predicted in September that it would post a fiscal fourth-quarter profit ranging from 74 cents to 81 cents a share on sales of between $590 million and $620 million.

In the fourth quarter last fiscal year, RIM lost $2.6 million, or 1 cent a share, on $404.8 million in sales. The loss was attributable to the company's recognition in the quarter of the costs of a later-aborted settlement with NTP and a tax gain the company also recorded.

Excluding those factors, the company would have earned $140.1 million, or 71 cents a share.

But revenue and earnings aren't everything. Indeed, in many ways outside of its likely income statement, this last quarter has been a poor one for RIM.

During the quarter, the company suffered a series of setbacks in its dispute with NTP, most recently when a federal district judge rejected the company's efforts to have him enforce an aborted settlement between the two companies and to delay any further proceedings while the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office reviews NTPs patents.

The federal court is now preparing to hold hearings on how much money it should assess RIM in damages for violating NTP's patents and on whether to reinstate an injunction that would bar RIM from offering its BlackBerry service in the U.S.

Investors have long worried about the patent dispute, but RIM has given them something else to fret about over the last quarter in the form of subscriptions. Last month the company said it expected its subscriber numbers to be 8% lower than expected in its third quarter and 3% lower than expected in the fourth.