BlackBerry posts surprise Q4 profit after cutting costs

BlackBerry has reported a surprise profit in the fourth quarter due to a radical cost-cutting plan the smartphone maker is undertaking.

BlackBerry said it had sold 1m of its new Z10 phone, which was released early this year.

The latest results did show that the 1billion dollars cost-cutting programme embarked on last year is polishing the company's margins.

The Canadian company posted a profit of 98 million dollars for the quarter compared with a loss of 125 million dollars in the same period a year ago, the Telegraph reports.

However, revenues dropped 2pc to 2.7 billion dollars for the quarter, trailing the 2.83 billion dollars that Wall Street has forecast.

According to the paper, Thorsten Heins, who has run BlackBerry since January last year, insisted that the its new phone and operating system is the "most innovative mobile computing platform in the market.

Given the phone only went on sale in major markets such as the US last week, analysts said it remains too early to judge whether the device will be enough to wrestle back share from Apple and manufacturers that use Google's Android software such as Samsung, the report added.