BAY ISMOYO/AFP/Getty ImagesBlackBerry made another move to return to its past strengths when it unveiled a new flagship smartphone that resurrects the company’s legacy physical trackpad and menu buttons.
John Chen is hoping that moving one step back will help BlackBerry Ltd. take two steps winning back customers.
Since taking over the embattled Waterloo, Ont.-based smartphone maker in November, Mr. Chen has made it clear the company must return to its roots if it hopes to restore its fortunes and rebound to profitability.
On Tuesday, BlackBerry made another move to return to its past strengths when it unveiled a new flagship smartphone that resurrects the company’s legacy physical trackpad and menu buttons, which had been eliminated from its most recent high end QWERTY smartphone, the Q10.
The new device, dubbed the Q20, is due to be released later this year.
Combined with BlackBerry’s renewed focus on its corporate and government clients and a heightened emphasis on its most popular piece of software, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), it’s clear Mr. Chen believes the path to finding a sustainable future for BlackBerry lies in focusing and improving on those elements which led to its profitable past.
“In my first 90 days on the job, I consistently heard from our ardent BlackBerry customers that the hard buttons and trackpad are an essential part of the BlackBerry QWERTY experience, that made their BlackBerry smartphone their go-to productivity tool,” Mr. Chen said in a statement.
“I want these customers to know that we heard them, and this new smartphone will be for them.”
Simon Dawson/BloombergJohn S. Chen, chief executive officer of BlackBerry Ltd., at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
Investors, it seems, are on board with Mr. Chen’s back to the future approach. Shares of BlackBerry rose 7.8% to close at US$10.60 on the Nasdaq Stock Market in New York. BlackBerry shares are up roughly 60% since Mr. Chen took the helm of the company in November.
The launch of the Q20 was one of a series of announcements BlackBerry made on Tuesday the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona.
BlackBerry also debuted a new full-touch smartphone designed for the Indonesian market — where BlackBerry remains strong — which marks the first smartphone to come from the manufacturing partnership the company signed with Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group in December.
As well, BlackBerry unveiled eBBM Suite, a new messaging platform for enterprise users in regulated industries which is designed to tie the company’s popular BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) technology deeper into its security infrastructure. The company also launched the latest version of its BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) technology.
HandoutThe BlackBerry Z3, a new full-touch smartphone designed for the Indonesian market.
Since taking over from the ousted Thorsten Heins, Mr. Chen, who is best known for the turnaround of Sybase Inc., has cleaned house in the executive ranks at the Canadian mobile pioneer and turned the company’s attention back to its enterprise roots: selling smartphones and the technology used to secure and manage devices and mobile communications to corporations, governments and other large organizations.
“For the foreseeable future, our designers in North America will focus on enterprise only,” Mr. Chen told investors on a conference call in December.
To combat BlackBerry’s waning influence among enterprise customers in the face of rising competition from other mobile device management (MDM) firms, Mr. Chen has rebuilt the companies sales force to target regulated industries with new services like eBBM.
With eBBM, BlackBerry plans to begin offering a new version of its BBM messaging software that is designed for “regulated industries,” such as governments, financial institutions and companies in the health care industry.
BAY ISMOYO/AFP/Getty ImagesBlackBerry remains strong in the Indonesian market.
According to BlackBerry, the first component of the new eBBM platform will by BBM Protected, which will provide enterprise messaging with “end-to-end encryption of messages.” The new system is designed to enable employees to communicate with one another using BBM with an enhanced level of security, while still allowing those users to message their friends using BBM.
Companies will be able to implement eBBM later this summer. The service will be billed on a monthly per-user fee.
In a not-so-stunning revelation on Tuesday, Mr. Chen told a reporter from CNBC that if someone approached him looking to buy BBM, and was willing to fork over the US$19-billion price Facebook Inc. recently shelled out for rival WhatsApp Inc., he would recommend the board take the deal.
“I work for the shareholders. The standard answer, right?” Mr. Chen said.
“If somebody comes to me with $19-billion I would definitely sell it. I mean, I would recommend to the board to take it, but it all depends on what it is.”
While BBM has seen its user base grow to more than 80 million users since BlackBerry opened the platform up to non-BlackBerry devices — namely Apple Inc.’s iPhones, as well as devices running Google Inc.’s Android and Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone software — the Waterloo company’s messaging service still trails WhatsApp’s 450-million strong user base by a wide margin.
Source from: http://business.financialpost.com
