RIM announces its earning for its fiscal Q1 2012, where WW revenues fall by -12% from the previous quarter, reaching totals of $4.9Bn-- a drop the company describes as "challenging". 

The company breaks down this total as 78% hardware, 20% service and 2% software. 

However RIM also says its international revenue for Q1 shows 67% Y-o-Y growth.

The earnings results also revealing its shipment totals for the quarter-- 13.2m Blackberry handheld devices and around 500000 Playbook tablets. 

The Playbook's underwhelming performance is currently US only, as the device is still to ship in EMEA. At least one UK retailer (O2) refuses to stock the device. 

RIM also predicts its current slowdown will persist throughout Q2-- resulting in device delays, lowered forecasts for the rest of the year and an unspecified number of layoffs.

Meanwhile Playbook owners have the release of native email and BBM, as well as the Android player, to look forward to later this summer...

Go RIM Fiscal Q1 2012 Results

At Apple's WWDC, Steve Jobs came on stage to announce iCloud, an Apple service that stores your music, and content and wirelessly pushes them to all your devices — automatically. Users can put all the songs they have ever bought from the company's iTunes store on up to 10 devices at no additional charge.

Apple says it will do the same with books and apps previously purchased through its online stores.

Future iTunes purchases can be automatically sent to all the devices. Content transfers will NOT require devices to be plugged into a computer (only a wireless connection).

Is Microsoft too late to enter the tablet race? Citigroup suggests otherwise, in a report saying Microsoft still has a chance to take over at least a chunk-- if not the #2 position-- of the market in 2013.

The analyst predicts Microsoft could even release a tablet-optimised version of Windows 8 before a PC version, particularly following the Windows 8 announcement this week.

Fuelling Microsoft's push towards tablet is consumer PC growth-- which, as seen in the chart (also by Citi analysts), is going into the negatives for the first time since, well, ever.

A Microsoft-powered tablet won't have it easy of course-- competition includes not only Apple and Android, but also RIM, HP and even Intel. However Citi suggests Microsoft won't enter the market until at least 70m tablets will be sold. Why?

One reason is pricing (where it will reach potential customers who find Apple/Android tablets too expensive). Another is Google's current Android-related woes (from legal issues to Android tablets selling poorly compared to the iPad).

Together to that, Microsoft has two strengths of its own-- developers familiar with its .NET platform and Java, and enterprise clients looking to extend their Office-based workflows through portable devices.

In conclusion, Citi's predictions state Microsoft will have "meaningful share" of a 2013 market tablet reaching 75m devices. Too fanciful? One can never tell in this business...

Go It's Not Too Late for Microsoft to Win in Tablets (Business Insider)

Go Proof the iPad is Affecting Consumer PC Sales

Google announces Google Wallet, its take on NFC-based mobile payments, with US backing from a number of tech and finance industry players (including Citi, MasterCard and Sprint). 

For release as an app, Google Wallet will allow users to pay by touching an appropriate credit card terminal with their phone-- while the app will also save credit cards, offers, loyalty cards and all the like. 

Google future plans for the system include expanding it to storage of boarding passes, tickets and IDs. 

Its going into mobile payments will be far from easy though as it steps on a large number of toes-- from Apple to Paypal and any number of banks and credit card companies. 

The next couple of years will be crucial to mobile payments in general. Will consumers even care about mobile payments? And if they will, which service will they go for? And that's before mobile service providers are even considered in the mix... Either way, an interesting battle will kick off quite soon, we think. 

Go Google Wallet