The BlackBerry DTEK 50, which was built by Alcatel, was the most recent phone released by BlackBerry. "The company plans to end all internal hardware development and will outsource that function to partners," CEO John Chen said in a statement. So far, BlackBerry has named just one such partner: Indonesia-based BB Merah Putih. BlackBerry's decision closes a significant chapter in one of the most storied franchises in the phone industry, and it puts an even higher premium on the company's shift of focus to software and services. BlackBerry was among the high flyers in the early days of mobile phones. Legions of "CrackBerry" addicts in the white-collar workforce tapped away at its trademark physical keys in the early 2000s.
Like many other companies, BlackBerry failed to anticipate the rise of Apple's iPhone and of phones running Google's Android software, which knocked BlackBerry back on its heels for years, Consumers have paid little attention to its phones despite the company's attempts to iphone screen protector magnifier modernize the BlackBerry software and, in a last-ditch effort last year, to embrace Android, It's been an unstoppable descent, In 2009, BlackBerry controlled one-fifth of the phone market, just behind Nokia, Today, it holds a tiny fraction of 1 percent, according to Gartner..
On Wednesday, BlackBerry posted fiscal second-quarter results that saw it swing to a loss of $372 million, or 71 cents a share, from a year-ago profit of $51 million, or 24 cents a share. Revenue fell by a third to $334 million. Analysts, on average, forecast a loss of 5 cents a share and revenue of $394 million. BlackBerry declined to comment on how many jobs would be cut, only noting that it has been "transitioning our mobile solutions work force" for quite some time. Chen confirmed on a call with analysts that BlackBerry will have little to do with future hardware efforts and will only collect a royalty fee on any phone sold by its partners.
BlackBerry had previously teased a second Android phone to come, but that's unlikely to show up, It's unclear whether future phones from the partnership will make their way to mature markets like the US, where the carriers have been lukewarm about carrying the devices, There remains, though, a small but dedicated base of users who appreciate the physical keyboard and focus on security, A BlackBerry spokeswoman said she didn't believe this move would hurt the ability for these phones to enter the US market, iphone screen protector magnifier She also declined to comment on the prospect of a licensed phone using BlackBerry 10 software..
Chen hinted at other interested companies looking to strike similar partnerships around the world, but didn't provide any names. He also hinted that there would be high-end devices focused on security. BlackBerry plans to complete the shutdown of the internal hardware business by the end of this fiscal year. In 2013, CEO John Chen came into BlackBerry with a mission to transform the company, focusing more on software and services. At the same time, he had to keep a foot in the phone business, which still generated a significant chunk of the company's revenue. Even in the most recent quarter, it accounted for 30 percent of the company's revenue.
