Investors in Research In Motion must be breathing a sigh of relief after the company reported third quarter results today that were in line with pre-announced results and analyst expectations. RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) made $396.3 million, or 69 cents a share, on revenues of $2.78 billion. Excluding certain charges, the company said it would have earned $477.3 million, or 83 cents a share. Analysts were expecting earnings of 86 cents a share on revenue of $3 billion, according to FactSet consensus. The company’s stock is up about 50 cents, or nearly 2 percent, to $39 a share, in after-hours trading.

Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO at RIM said in a statement that the company achieved record revenue results and the fourth quarter is appearing strong despite economic conditions. “RIM launched an unprecedented number of BlackBerry smartphones in the third quarter and these new products are being adopted at an even faster pace than we expected. Our industry leading product portfolio is positioned well to capitalize on the increasing market opportunity in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009 and beyond.”

Revenue Breakdown: Revenue were up 7.9 compared to the previous quarter and up 66.3 percent from the same quarter a year ago. The company said 81 percent of revenue came from devices, 13 percent from services, 2 percent from software and 4 percent from other. The BlackBerry-maker shipped about 6.7 million devices, and added 2.6 million net new subscriber accounts. It increased its subscriber base by 14 percent compared to the prior quarter to about 21 million.

Outlook: The big question is how will the holiday period perform, and is the economy going to have a big impact on the sales of smartphones. RIM said revenues for Q4, ending Feb. 28, is expected to be in the range of $3.30 to $3.50 billion. RIM expects to add about 2.9 million subscribers, and earnings per share will range between 83 cents to 91 cents a share.

Release. Conference call (at 2 p.m. PST).