BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) confirmed that it would retain physical buttons and a touch-pad in its Classic devices to gain back lost ground in enterprise mobility, says a report from IT World Canada. Jim Mackey, executive vice-president of the company, said at an event in Toronto on Thursday that the Classic range of devices is in demand, as is evident from customer feedback.
“Let’s be honest, it’s the phone that millions of users know and love,” he said.
Betting big on BES 12 multi-platform compatibility
Last month, CEO John Chen stated that the new Classic devices would be rolled out in November. Chen has contradicted former CEO Thorsten Heins’ strategy, who launched the Z10 devices, which have a complete touchscreen similar to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s iPhone and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (LON:BC94) (KRX:005930)’s Galaxy S5.
Other than devices, the Canadian company is trying to resolve issues raised by its corporate customers in areas like cloud computing, device management and the Internet of Things. BlackBerry President of Global Enterprise Services John Sims said that BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) has many valuable assets other than devices, like carrier relationships, its security tools and the upcoming BlackBerry Enterprise server 12. Sims said that BES12 will address a big concern of IT departments, which have to connect various mobile operating systems to get the network to work properly. BES12 will make cross-platform capability front and center.
“The way we presented that to the industry is we pumped up BES10, and we kind of muffled behind our hand and under our breath said, ‘We also support iOS and Android,” Sims said, and added that this is not what people expect to hear from BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) these days.
BlackBerry offers best enterprise solution
Sims cited research firm Gartner’s report, which suggested that BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) is the best company to offer product services that are compatible with the corporately-owned, personally-enabled model of offering greater device choices in corporations. Sims said that the neutrality of the report can be established because “our friends at Gartner are not always our friends,” pointing to a report by the research firm last year in which it asked the CIO to leave the company while it was in its restructuring phase.
Sims confirmed that BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) (TSE:BB) will launch BBM Protected during the summer. BBM Protected is an enterprise version of company’s messaging app. The enterprise segment will be more secure with options to sign into BBM chats with BES off. Sims added that the version will be helpful in regulated industries to meet compliance requirement.
