Why BlackBerry is back - and here to stay

October, 14th 2013

Dubai: BlackBerry’s regional office is launching a high-profile media campaign to reiterate its commitment to the market and to its legions of users.

According to the new campaign, which breaks from Tuesday, October 15, the company says: “We have substantial cash on hand and a balancesheet that is debt free. We are restructuring with a goal to cut our expenses by 50 per cent in order to run a very efficient, customer-oriented organisation.”

The Canadian tech major, and pioneer of the smartphone revolution, plans to cut 40 per cent of its workforce in a bid to halve its operating costs by June 1, 2014.

“These are no doubt challenging times for us,” the new ad states.

“We don’t underestimate the situation or ignore the challenges. We are making the difficult changes necessary to strengthen BlackBerry.

“One thing we will never change is our commitment to those of you who helped build BlackBerry into the most trusted tool for the world’s business professional,” the campaign reads.

Over the past quarter, BlackBerry’s Enterprise Service 10 server base grew from 19,000 to more than 25,000. Corporate clients are committed to deploying and testing the latest enterprise technology from BlackBerry.

“We are committed to evolving with our customers. That will never change,” the campaign says.

Nick Horton, BlackBerry’s managing director for the Middle East and North Africa, says that BlackBerry is planning a lot of promotions and activities in the next couple of months and also increased its marketing compared to last quarter.

He said BlackBerry is officially going through a transition globally.

In the Middle East, “our strategy remains the same, [we’ve been] doing two things this year. One is targeting wider path of the consumer and business markets with good offerings and we are also transitioning customers from traditional BlackBerry operating system (BB7) to the new BB10 operating system.

“We are so far successful in doing it and will continue through the rest of the year,” said Horton.

Despite global woes, BlackBerry is still in good shape in the region.

Quoting a GfK report, Horton said that BlackBerry is ranked the number two smartphone vendor in Saudi Arabia and number three in the UAE.

“Our global focus is going to remain on the enterprises market but in the Middle East it is a different picture. We will continue to focus on consumer and business markets with our devices. “Our intention is to make consumers switch from BB7 to BB10 with new offerings and promotions with telecom operators and retailers,” he said.

Horton said Blackberry and Fairfax were going through a due diligence.

They are trying to work out a value as a whole and “we expect the process to be completed on November 4,” he said.

In the region, 98 per cent of the consumers use BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), one of the highest customer use rates in the world. In the UAE, 98 per cent of all BlackBerry customers utilise BBM to stay in contact with their networks, families, friends and colleagues.

“When we look at the social apps it is clear that scale is important,” Horton said.

“That is why we have decided to take BBM across other platforms. But that does not mean Blackberry devices will lose value.

“We are 100 per cent confident that our devices have the right differentiation, right platform and the right brand to compete in the smartphone race.”

Source: Gulfnews.com