RIMM's Logic for No Longer Reporting Net Adds and ASP
From the Seeking Alpha transcript of yesterday's call:
Maynard Um – UBS
Hi, thanks. Just a clarification and then a question. I guess I understand not guiding the net adds but can you run through the rationale of not reporting the net adds afterwards because there is a big sensitivity particularly to the out years related to your service revenue, and then the question is just following up on the US and it sounds like on North America net adds will actually reaccelerate kind of given the Torch and the reinvigorations from that product, but that then implies that your international net adds will actually weaken so I'm just trying to understand the dynamics, or is something happening on the international side or is there I guess if you could just run through the dynamics there? Thank you.
Jim Balsillie
Well I think we're guiding kind of 20-ish percent growth in it, so quarter-over-quarter, so there's room in both there and you kind of take a number and roll them up to a discount and but it's also – you know, you get this variability because sometimes there's – they go out as phones, sometimes there's upgrades and they don't go with net, sometimes you get these different events and so, I mean, how much information is helpful and how much do you just put yourself in a position where it's got variability as Edel said and how much do you sort of competitively disadvantage yourself by over disclosing stuff but I mean we'll give you periodic indications of the overall subscriber base.
I mean, we'll let people know when we hit a hundred million or maybe 75 million, and you can sort of do the math. It's sort of how long that is going to take and the only question is it one quarter earlier or one quarter later really, I mean that’s how you do the stuff out how we do it and that's how we have to plan our infrastructure. It's basically number of subs and the utilization profile of those guys so we have a pretty good sense of it but, you know I mean, you can also pretty much deduce it. It's just how much granularity do you give? I mean, we – know that it is competitive and then you have a responsibility to in turbulence of business to keep people all updated on it and you know –
