By Prince McLean

Published: 06:00 PM EST

BackBerry maker Research in Motion reported strong sales for its fiscal Q3 2010 but saw its shares slip some 7% as both revenues and shipments fell short of Wall Street’s expectations.

The Canadian smartphone maker said it shipped 10.5 million units during the three-month period ended February while adding 4.9 million net new subscribers. Analysts, however, had expected closer to 11 million units.

By comparison, Apple shipped 8.7 million iPhones during its first quarter of 2010, which ended in December. The fiscal quarters of the two rivals are always offset by two months, which means there’s never been precise data available to the public for a direct comparison of iPhone and BlackBerry sales over a set three-month span. RIM’s Q3 ended in February.

Apple only sells the iPhone on AT&T in the US and has not dramatically discounted its smartphones in “buy one get one” offers. RIM has expanded its sales largely through lower priced models such as the popular BlackBerry Curve. Even so, RIM’s profit margins came in at 45.7%, higher than many analysts has expected.

Despite lots of good news, it appears RIM’s earnings reports triggered a selloff due to unrealistic expectations.

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Today: Apple stock climbs ahead of Saturday’s iPad debut. Cisco Systems wins antitrust clearance for its $3-billion-plus Tandberg acquisition.

iPad anticipation

Just days before the debut of the iPad, Apple stock hit a new all-time high of $233.87 today before closing at $232.39, up $1.49, or 0.6 percent.

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A release date for the Verizon iPhone 4G is around the corner. A Verizon iPhone release launch date on the Verizon 4G network has been reported by LALATE since January.

Now Verizon iPhone 4G reports heat up once again. It all started in January 2010. In advance of the (then unannounced iPad) Apple press conference, industry analysts contended that Apple would announce (a) a launch of a new tablet product and (b) the expansion of iPhone onto the Verizon and Sprint Networks.

The rest is history.

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Thousands of years after Moses led his people out of Egypt, the Passover story is going digital.

At Monday’s Seder meal, dozens of families will be reading the traditional tableside ceremony from a Haggadah, a text guiding the Seder, that they have personalized by uploading family photos to replace stock illustrations of Pharaoh and the slaves.

Behrman House, a Jewish educational publisher in Springfield, N.J., has sold more than 100 sets of the cyber-assisted version of its Family Haggadah.

The personalized Haggadah — the Hebrew word means “telling” or “narrative” — recounts the biblical Exodus story and instructs families to relate it to their children as though they were along on the journey.

“We see it as a way for people to make the experience their own, that they and their families are the Jewish people who went through this,” said Behrman House project coordinator Jessica Gurtman.

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