Blackberry rented one of the most prestigious venues in cramped new york for the launch of the new blackberry 10 smartphone system and brought in busloads of journalists, analysts and business partners. Then sanger alicia keys also performed to cheers.
RIM made several hundred million dollars in losses last year due to the advance of apple’s iphone and android phones, and is currently cutting 5000 jobs as a result. The run auand makes it clear: blackberry 10 must be a success.
The man who is supposed to guarantee this success is named thorsten heins and comes from germany. "This is one of the roughest new launches in our industry," said blackberry’s chief executive on wednesday at pier 36, an old warehouse in downtown manhattan right on the east river. VW had already presented its retro-kafer beetle here, the brewer heineken had brought the cee-lo green onto the stage for a group, and a wedding with 900 people had already taken place here.
And now the unveiling of blackberry 10. Parallel events were held in london, paris, toronto, dubai and johannesburg. The day began with the news that blackberry manufacturer research in motion (RIM) is renaming itself blackberry, then followed the presentation of two smartphones, one with the familiar keyboard, one with a pure touchscreen.
A surprise was the appearance of alicia keys: the singer will be the future brand ambassador for blackberry and the new system. "It’s a rough assignment," she said. "I was in a long-term relationship with blackberry, then i realized there are heavier guys out there," keys confessed. But now it has returned.
For the company, this is the "most important event in the company’s history since 1996," the "new york times" noted. At the time, the company’s founders showed investors a small piece of wood and promised that a wireless e-mail machine shaped like this would change business forever. The prophecy came true: blackberrys became the status symbol of managers all over the world – and ultimately also paved the way for iphone and co. The way.
But instead of leading the market, blackberry is now fighting for survival. The canadians relied on a keyboard for their blackberrys for too long and missed the trend toward touch-sensitive screens. Apple rolled up this market – and finally overran RIM. Later google joined in with its android operating system, which powers samsung’s popular galaxy devices for example.
Blackberry 10 is now ready like a car before a race, noted gartner analyst carolina milanesi. "Now they don’t have to stall the engine and cause an accident."The market research company ovum credited blackberry with setting the new system apart from the rest of the market. "It will be a challenge to attract new users and win back those who have already switched to other smartphones."
Company boss heins has been at the helm for a year now. "It was the most challenging year of my career," he said. At the same time, he says, it has also been the most fulfilling. The mid-fifties man had made his career in the former communications division of siemens before moving to RIM in 2007, where he ran the day-to-day operations before being appointed to the chief executive post. He replaced the recently heavily criticized management duo of mike lazaridis and jim balsillie.
Heins was aware of the difficult task and took action: he cut almost one in three of the 16,500 jobs that had once existed, thereby reducing costs by one billion dollars. At the same time, he kept his developers focused on perfecting the new blackberry 10 operating system. Several times the publication was postponed, the investors became restless. But heins proved he had a wide cross: "we knew it was risky."
Last year, the share of blackberry sales more than halved to 4.6 percent, according to market research firm IDC – in a smartphone market that was booming overall. The number of blackberrys shipped shrank by more than a third to 32.5 million. By comparison, samsung shipped 215.8 million computer phones in the same period, and apple shipped 135.9 million iphones, according to IDC calculations. Blackberry now wants to win back its regular customers in companies and authorities in particular.
But the comeback won’t be easy: apple and especially microsoft with its new operating system windows phone 8 are also targeting business customers. Windows smartphones, for example, come with a slimmed-down version of the familiar office programs. What blackberry can count on is still 79 million users. The race to catch up has begun.
RELATED POSTS
At the kerwa, the rough derby takes place Who would have thought that today both teams would go into the neighborly duel level on points?? Of course, one had to expect the current score from the… |
The saarland election: rough coalition expected, leadership open Both major parties have made it clear in the unspectacular election campaign that they intend to form a coalition with each other. The only open question… |
Ba boss prepares employment agency for possible wave of bankruptciesThe chairman of the federal employment agency (BA), detlef scheele, has prepared his agency for a possible wave of bankruptcies. The BA is preparing for… |
Eu parliament says yes to eurozone banking supervision The vote, which had been blocked for months, became possible after the ECB agreed to guarantee the EU parliament insight into its decision-making… |
