RIM under pressure to slash carrier fees, which now account for one-third of revenue
When it rains, it pours. And in RIM’s case, it turns into a Noah-style biblical flood. Bloomberg News, via The Financial Post, reports that the troubled BlackBerry maker is now facing pressure from mobile carriers to slash the fees it charges them in exchange for giving their wireless subscribers access to RIM’s BlackBerry server infrastructure. The carrier fees generate more than $4 billion in annual revenue for RIM, meaning the firm could soon be taking a hit in one of its major sources of revenues. Northern Securities analyst Sameet Kanade told Bloomberg that ”revenue from the monthly fee could drop 17% to $3.4 billion this year and another 18% to $2.8 billion in fiscal 2014 as carriers such as AT&T and Verizon Wireless seek lower fees amid the company’s diminishing clout.”
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