BlackBerry offered few signs of a long-promised turnaround yesterday, with an unexpected quarterly operating loss, a dearth of details on sales of its make-or-break new line of devices and no return to profit expected in the current quarter.

The Canadian smartphone maker, which has struggled to compete against Apple's iPhone, Samsung's Galaxy phones and other devices powered by Google's Android operating system, said smartphone sales were up 13 per cent from the previous quarter, a period when buyers waited for the BB10 phones to hit the market.

But deliveries are down from a year ago as sales of its older line of BlackBerry devices taper off. Excluding one-time items such as the cost of job cuts, BlackBerry reported a loss from continuing operations of $67 million, or 13 cents a share, on revenue of $3.1 billion.

Analysts, on average, expected a profit of six cents a share, on revenue of $3.36 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S Estimates. Earnings were also reduced about 10 cents a share due to Venezuelan currency restrictions.

"We haven't received the BlackBerry 10 unit numbers yet, but certainly it doesn't bode well for the initial BlackBerry 10 launch, particularly the Z10. But even the outlook for a Q2 loss doesn't bode well for the Q10 either," said Brian Colello, an analyst with Morningstar.

BlackBerry launched two all-new smartphones this year, the touch screen Z10 device, followed by the Q10, which includes the mini keyboard many BlackBerry users still covet.

It has also launched the Q5, a lower-end keyboard device targeted at emerging markets, and plans to unveil one more cheaper phone running on its old BlackBerry 7 platform later this year.-Reuters