BlackBerry shipped 2.7 million BB10 devices in Q1

BlackBerry shipped less than three million BlackBerry 10 (BB10) devices during the first three months of its financial year, the company has confirmed.

The beleaguered smartphone maker released its first quarter financial results for 2014 earlier today, where it revealed that 6.8 million BlackBerry handsets and 100,000 PlayBook tablets had been shipped during the three months to 1 June.

The financial statement stopped short of revealing just how many of these handsets sported the BB10 operating system, but the company later spilled the beans during an earnings call and confirmed that just 2.7 million had shipped.

The shipment figures come as something of a surprise, given that BlackBerry previously trumpeted the fact that one million of its recently introduced Z10 smartphones had shipped during its first three weeks on sale, leading many to assume that this early momentum would continue on.

The company also posted an $84 million loss during Q1. This was a marked improvement on last year's results, though, which saw the firm chalk up a loss of $518 million.

Meanwhile, its Q1 revenue was up 15 per cent on the previous quarter at $3.1 billion.

Hardware accounted for 71 per cent of the firm's Q1 revenue, followed by services at 26 per cent, and software and other revenue at three per cent.

In a statement, Thorsten Heins, chief executive of BlackBerry, said it was still early days for the new operating system and its accompanying devices.

"The BlackBerry 10 platform and BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 are proving themselves to customers to be very secure, flexible and dynamic mobile computing solutions," he said.

"Over the next three quarters, we will be increasing our investments to support the roll out of new products and services, and to demonstrate that BlackBerry has established itself as a leading and vibrant player in next generation mobile computing solutions for both consumer and enterprise custotmers."

At the time of writing, BlackBerry shares were down around 27 per cent and were trading at $10.59 each.