Research In Motion Ltd. reported its second consecutive quarterly profit and decent sales for its new flagship phone Thursday, but perhaps the biggest revelation from its chief executive was a risky strategy to revive the company.

The plan: Roll out a portfolio of mixed-price phones to help shore up the company's dwindling smartphone-market share and the expected declines in service-fee revenue.

With cost cutting and layoffs mostly done, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins said he has been encouraged so far with the rollout of the BlackBerry Z10, the first phone running off RIM's new operating system.

With only a month of sales from a limited number of markets, it is still far from clear that launch is a success.

But Mr. Heins said he is already turning his attention to a series of new, as-yet-unseen products due out later in RIM's fiscal year -- signaling he is eager to go after several different markets with low- and midprice versions of the new phones.

The shift, which Mr. Heins has alluded to in the past, appears to be an acknowledgment that no matter how big a hit the Z10 may prove, the BlackBerry isn't likely to compete in the same league any time soon with market leaders Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.

'I don't think anyone expects BlackBerry to dominate like they once did,' said Al Hilwa, an analyst at industry consultancy IDC. 'But the company can survive and even prosper with a microbrew of a platform, with 5% to 10% market share, if it can execute well and at the right scale.'

Investors are looking for more proof. RIM's shares closed down 0.8% to $14.45 on Thursday after rising as much as 10% immediately after the earningsrelease in the morning.

RIM's strategy comes with risks. By touting future rollouts in the midst of a just-begun Z10 launch, Mr. Heins is gambling that RIM can play in many different markets at once, something it has done with only limited success in the past.

And Thursday's earnings underscored some of the big challenges still facing RIM.

BlackBerry subscribers world-wide fell by about three million to 76 million, the steepest three-month drop for RIM.

The company attributed the subscriber fall largely to declines in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, though it didn't provide details.

Mr. Heins gave few details about the new products he envisioned, but said he expected more rollouts in the company's current fiscal year, which began earlier this month.

'We're building a portfolio in this fiscal year, so you will see us getting into the market with various products,' Mr. Heins said on a conference call with analysts Thursday.

Aside from selling phones, one of RIM's key sources of cash in recent years has been service fees generated by BlackBerry users and carriers. Mr. Heins said those fees, which represent more than one-third of RIM's revenue, fell in the 'single digits' in the quarter.

Mr. Heins said he expected the service fees to decline as the company works with carriers, who are eager to reduce those payments now that RIM's command of the smartphone market -- once a dominant one -- has crumbled.

Will Connors