“BlackBerry’s chances of becoming a viable contender to Apple Inc. and Google Inc. in the smartphone market are dimming amid lackluster demand for its flagship touch-screen device,” Peter Burrows and Madeline McMahon report for Bloomberg.
“Corporate information-technology departments have long wanted a third alternative to Apple’s iPhones and devices based on Google’s Android operating system, to ensure innovation and price competition,” Burrows and McMahon report. “Yet many businesses are dropping support for BlackBerry as employees flock to touch-screen devices from Apple, Samsung Electronics Co. and others, according to makers of software used by companies to manage smartphones at work.”
Burrows and McMahon report, “That trend was underscored last week when BlackBerry missed analysts’ estimates for phone shipments and profit. Now the Waterloo, Ontario-based company could see further declines as businesses grow more skeptical of its brand, said Bob Tinker, chief executive officer of MobileIron Inc., which makes smartphone-management software used by 5,000 companies. That makes Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone a likelier third option. ‘Most of our customers have been planning to support three mobile operating systems — iOS, Android and either Windows Phone or BlackBerry,’ Tinker said. ‘The recent results indicate that BlackBerry is not going to be the third.'”
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