Shareholders appear to think that Research In Motion (RIM) is tanking after the BlackBerry maker lowered its outlook and announced plans to cut jobs.

Shares in the outfit have fallen dramatically after the Canadian handset maker on Friday posted a net profit of $695 million for the last quarter compared with $769 million a year ago. Wall Street doom watchers claim that RIM is facing too much competition from Apple's iPhone and mobile phones running Google's Android and revenue grew 16 per cent to $4.9 billion, short of the $5.1 billion they expected.

RIM said it shipped 13.2 million BlackBerry smartphones during the quarter, down from 14.9 million last quarter, and 500,000 of its new BlackBerry Playbook tablet computers, RIM's answer to Apple's iPad.  This was much better than many expected.