RIM Defies Doomsayers, Yet Again

Far from failing, RIM talks up its PlayBook and its bright future.
By Scott Moritz ,

NEW YORK (

TheStreet

) -- Like a certain scruffy, gray-bearded quarterback,

Research In Motion

(RIMM)

just doesn't know when to quit.

Thumbing his nose at smartphone rivals

Apple

(AAPL) - Get Report

and

Google

(GOOG) - Get Report

Android, RIM co-chief Jim Balsillie dismissed any worries about stale products, intensifying competition and RIM's declining stature at No. 1 wireless shop

Verizon

(VZ) - Get Report

.

"We feel very, very good about the future," Balsillie told analysts on an earnings conference call Thursday evening.

Balsillie had a little time to gloat after RIM delivered stronger-than-expected results and guided above analysts' targets for the current quarter ending in February.

The good old beat-and-raise routine was the second such performance by RIM in the past two quarters. The resilience has confounded bears who point to the weak BlackBerry lineup amid a crush of

hugely impressive superphones

from

Samsung

,

Microsoft

(MSFT) - Get Report

,

Motorola

(MOT)

and Apple.

Pessimists have expected RIM, without a compelling new phone of its own, to fall into an abyss. But the company continues to sidestep disaster and even expound glowingly about its PlayBook tablet device that should start selling sometime before the end of February.

Thanks to strong international growth -- particularly the spread of BlackBerries to Latin America and Southeast Asia -- RIM was able to offset a slowdown in the U.S. and raise its BlackBerry sales target.

RIM says it will sell about 14.75 million BlackBerries in the February quarter. That target is above the 14.2 million level from the most recent quarter and above the 14 million mark analysts had been looking for in, what is typically a seasonally slower post-holiday quarter.

"The fact that RIM is able to guide for such a strong fiscal fourth quarter despite fading Verizon orders and without booking tablet revenues yet is, in our view, a powerful rebuttal to recent claims of the company's detractors," MKM Partners analyst Tero Kuittinen wrote in a research note Friday.

RIM investors liked the show of moxie from the grizzled smartphone veteran pushing the stock up 2.58% to $60.71 in early trading Friday.

--Written by Scott Moritz in New York.>To contact this writer, click here: Scott Moritz, or email: scott.moritz@thestreet.com.To follow Scott on Twitter, go to http://twitter.com/MoritzDispatch.>To send a tip, email: tips@thestreet.com.

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