“Don’t worry, BlackBerry fans: Your favorite smartphone with that keyboard you love is sticking around for the time being. But that’s not what BlackBerry is about anymore,” James O’Toole reports for CNN Money. “‘Everything we’re doing is to bring solutions for our enterprise customers,’ said John Sims, one of BlackBerry’s chief lieutenants, at the wireless industry’s trade show in Las Vegas this week.”
“Sims, who heads up BlackBerry’s business and government division, said BlackBerry believes it can still make money in the device business from its niche of loyal users — the ones “that are still holding together, with bubble gum or tape or whatever, their BlackBerry Bolds,” O’Toole reports. “Its focus, however, will be providing software and services to business customers, particularly those in heavily regulated sectors like finance and insurance that demand top-notch security.”
“There’s a still a long way to go in the turnaround effort, and in the meantime, the company faces challenges from competitors like Apple and IBM, which announced a partnership in July to sell iPhones and iPads with specialized business software,” O’Toole reports. “Sims said that when he started holding outside meetings earlier this year, ‘the first question customers asked was ‘Are you guys going to be around in a couple of years?” Sims said that those concerns have eased as BlackBerry’s turnaround plans have come into focus, but the company’s future is still far from certain.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Seriously, just how important is that mechanical keyboard, really? We’ve used them. Meh. To the three Luddites left still using BlackBerry devices because they supposedly love the keyboard, we have a message: Get over it. Your phone sucks. You’re missing out on virtually everything for something that is utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “buddabob” and “Edward W.” for the heads up.]