MobileIron cuts 2015 outlook as customers go subscription

MobileIron cut its second quarter and 2015 outlook and signaled that there may not be an easy fix to its first quarter woes.

When the company issued a profit warning last week, it said that the shortfall was due to big deals that didn't close and a shift to subscriptions over licensing.

At the very least, that latter issue appears to be ongoing.

Previously: Enterprise mobility management market shifts amid MobileIron, Citrix struggles

For the second quarter, MobileIron said that revenue will be between $33.6 million and $34.6 million. Wall Street was expecting $37.85 million.

As for 2015, MobileIron said revenue will be between $141.8 million and $151.8 million. Wall Street was expecting $160.3 million.

MobileIron's first quarter net loss was 27 cents a share on revenue of $33.5 million.

On a conference call with analysts, CEO Bob Tinker said he was "personally disappointed" with the first quarter results and said subscriptions were changing the sales mix more than expected. Tinker also addressed some of the questions that were swirling from a week ago. Tinker said:

First, let me proactively several questions that we are sure you have. First, ASPs (average selling prices) for the quarter were flat quarter-over-quarter. Two, our head-to-head win rate in competitive remained above 66%. And three our range rates were in line with historical trends are of over 90%.

Tinker added that the deals that shifted were with companies that were already MobileIron customers. "They did not place expand orders as expected," said Tinker. Some of those deals were closed and a few were lost as they are every quarter, he said.

The overall theme from MobileIron is that it wasn't seeing customers defect as much as they were changing how they acquire the software.