BlackBerry beats expectations

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, March 28, 2013 at 1:37 PM - 0 Comments

Eric Risberg/AP

BlackBerry (formerly Research In Motion Ltd.) continues to prove its harshest critics wrong. The company today posted a return to profitability in the fourth quarter, announced the retirement of co-founder and board vice chair Mike Lazaridis and revealed that the company sold about a million devices running its new BB10 platform during the three-month period. The device sales were in-line with Wall Street’s expectations and were considerably more than the 300,000 or so predicted by some of the more bearish analysts following the stock.

It’s the first piece of solid data about the company’s efforts to make the transition from its legacy OS to a new platform. Though still too early to call BB10 a success, CEO Thorsten Heins said during a conference call that more than 50 per cent of people who have bought a BlackBerry Z10 touchscreen were non-BlackBerry customers, which bodes well for the company’s early efforts to win back market share from industry leaders Apple and Google. A version of the device featuring a physical keyboard is expected to launch soon.

Key to BlackBerry’s comeback will be making an impact in the huge U.S. market. While some analysts have expressed concerns about the Z10′s mid-March U.S. launch, Heins suggested it was far too early to pass judgment (the figures reported today only include sales up until March 2). He also cautioned against making assumptions about Z10 sales based on spot checks with retailers. “Guessing the store line-ups has become a bit of a spectator sport in our industry,” Heins said. “I would like to emphasize that BlackBerry 10 has a phased roll out.” In other words, investors will have to wait another three months for more answers.

Fanciful BlackBerry Super Bowl ad focuses on what new Z10 smartphone can’t do

By The Canadian Press - Sunday, February 3, 2013 at 11:15 PM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – In an usual marketing twist, the maker of the BlackBerry bought a 30 second advertisement on the Super Bowl broadcast to promote what the new smartphone can’t do.

The fantastical commercial showed a man walking out of a store playing with the features of his new BlackBerry Z10 touchscreen device.

The first time he swipes the phone’s screen his sweater catches fire, while the second time his lower body turns into elephant legs.

When he swipes the phone again he bursts into colourful powder before another swipe turns a crashing tanker truck into hundreds of rubber duckies. Continue…

Top 5 ‘Top Five’ lists about the new Blackberry 10

By Tamsin McMahon - Friday, February 1, 2013 at 1:13 PM - 0 Comments

Now that RIM BlackBerry has launched its new smartphone, the BlackBerry 10, this week to largely positive reviews, the Internet is rife with lists promising consumers “Everything You Need to Know” about the new device.

Rather than add another review to the mix, we’ve put together our own top five list of “Top Five” lists about the new BlackBerry 10:

1. CNN offers its take on the five coolest features about the new BlackBerry 10.

2.  Not one to get too caught up in the hype of the phone’s release, the Toronto Star offers five ways in which RIM screwed up in the past.

3. Android OS fan site Androidauthority.com found five things about the new BlackBerry 10 that should leave Android users quaking in their boots

4. Gizmodo offers five videos of stupid things people did to win a free BlackBerry 10 from fan site Crackberry.com (Hint: they involved bikinis, tattoos and paper cranes.)

5. Following on its hugely successful Nov. 27 post entitled “20 Things You Didn’t Know About Baby Carrots,” The Huffington Post honoured the BB10 launch with its top things you didn’t know about blackberries. (The fruit, not the company/phone.)

Apparently, blackberries are also known as thimbleberries and lawers. Also, if your blackberry plant turns orange, it’s dying of an incurable fungus and should go in the garbage. (No word on whether the same advice applies to BlackBerry 10.)

BlackBerry shares continue downward slide

By The Canadian Press - Thursday, January 31, 2013 at 11:02 AM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – Shares in BlackBerry are continuing their downward slide a day after the smartphone pioneer debuted new product offerings to generally positive reviews.

The Waterloo, Ont., company’s stock (TSX:RIM) was down almost eight per cent to $12.76 in the first 10 minutes of trading in Toronto.

The drop continued a loss in share value that began earlier this week ahead of the unveiling of the new BlackBerry Z10 and the BlackBerry Q10.

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Here’s a twentysomething that doesn’t want a sleek new BlackBerry

By Mika Rekai - Wednesday, January 30, 2013 at 5:59 PM - 0 Comments

As a young person with a BlackBerry, sometimes I get lonely.

I first felt the loneliness in the winter of 2010, when I would get together with my regular crew of early twentysomethings in a dive bar or a beer-glazed living room. It was the first true winter of the iPhone, and where once, in the heyday of our youth, we would spend our time socializing meaningfully, looking deeply into each other’s eyes as we discussed world issues, now everyone seemed to be transfixed by their cool new phones, and specifically, by“apps”. Charlie had an app which helped him build a bookshelf, Chad had an app to help him run five kilometres, Lucy had an app which was just a bunch of photos of fit girls’ bottoms and they all had Angry Birds. “What apps do you have?” they asked me.

“I have no apps,” I said, the shame welling up inside me. “I only have a competent phone, which keeps me reliably connected to friends, family and school.”

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New touchscreen BlackBerry in Canadian stores Feb. 5

By David Friend - Wednesday, January 30, 2013 at 2:59 PM - 0 Comments

Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Canada’s smartphone pioneer will have a new BlackBerry in Canadian stores next Tuesday, the start of a new chapter for a rebranded company that’s seen its once dominant position trounced by the competition.

The BlackBerry Z10, a touchscreen model, will be the first to hit the shelves while the BlackBerry Q10, which will have a physical keyboard, will follow in April — a move that was signalled last year by the company.

Research In Motion (TSX:RIM) made the announcement Wednesday at a splashy unveiling in New York City, where it also let it be known the company will now go by the name BlackBerry.

The new BlackBerry models are widely seen as a make-or-break product for the company — the BlackBerry 10 devices were originally due for release last year.

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Five things that may convince smartphone buyers to pick up a new BlackBerry

By Michael Oliveira - Wednesday, January 30, 2013 at 2:56 PM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – It’s not an iPhone killer and doesn’t absolutely demolish the best Android or Microsoft smartphones on the market. But the new BlackBerry Z10 is a huge step forward for the beleaguered company formerly known as Research in Motion, which is now simply calling itself BlackBerry.

Here are five things that will impress BlackBerry aficionados and may sway smartphone consumers without entrenched allegiances to Apple or Android.

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RIM fanboys and football fans: not so different

By Peter Nowak - Wednesday, January 30, 2013 at 6:17 AM - 0 Comments

RIM to debut new BlackBerry smartphones in a heavily hyped unveiling

By The Canadian Press - Wednesday, January 30, 2013 at 5:59 AM - 0 Comments

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Following several delays and much anticipation, the new BlackBerry smartphones will be unveiled this morning in New York.

Research In Motion (TSX:RIM), the company behind the once dominant smartphones, is holding a splashy event in Manhattan to usher in the new devices, which were originally due for release last year.

The debut is expected to showcase the device as well as provide key launch details.

That will likely include its release date, which is expected in the next four to six weeks, the phone’s features and how much it will cost.

The company says the new BlackBerry will be released first in a touchscreen version, while a keypad alternative will follow in the weeks or months afterward.

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RIM prepares to raise the curtain on BlackBerry 10

By The Canadian Press - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 at 5:00 AM - 0 Comments

NEW YORK, N.Y. – After several technical blunders, two unexpected delays and one major shakeup in its leadership, BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion is about to raise the curtain for its new smartphone devices in hopes that consumers share the excitement.

The unveiling of the phones and operating system on Wednesday marks the start of an advertising blitz that will stretch to social media, the Super Bowl and beyond as RIM tries to regain the cool factor that was once firmly in its grasp.

If all goes according to plan, the event will also mark the end of a troublesome 12 months that has seen RIM try to stay afloat while its future was constantly in question by outsiders, and its stock price tumbled to the lowest level in about a decade.

While the first hurdles to overcome on Wednesday are the opinions of tech analysts and investor reaction, the true measure of success — actual sales of the phones — is still weeks away.

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Does the BlackBerry 10 launch even matter?

By Peter Nowak - Monday, January 28, 2013 at 10:35 AM - 0 Comments

Eric Risberg/AP

Does anybody else have the feeling that this week’s launch of BlackBerry 10 doesn’t really matter? It’s not for anything that Research In Motion is or isn’t doing with its long-awaited and overdue handsets, but rather because mobile devices are on their way to becoming commoditized.

With smartphones, it’s Google that’s driving the trend. As with virtually every area of its business, the company isn’t so interested in selling things to consumers as it is in getting them online and using its services, with the money coming from the ads it serves them that way. That’s why Google is selling the Nexus 4 in North America for $300 without a contract, while in the developing world it’s moving smartphones for just $50. It’s also why Android has more than three quarters of the world’s market share for smartphones. If Google knew the first thing about actually selling stuff to consumers, the constantly sold-out Nexus 4 would be an even bigger deal than it is.

Neither the Nexus 4 nor those African phones are as high-powered as most of the “hero” devices being sold in advanced markets, but for many users, they’re good enough. With Google plying this very different agenda, smartphone prices have only one way to go: down.

That’s good for consumers, as it will ultimately change the way phones are sold here in North America. Cheap handsets mean consumers won’t need to sign on for subsidized contracts with carriers. And with no contracts to lock them in, carriers may actually be forced to give consumers better service and prices.

But it’s bad for phone makers. The healthy profit margins enjoyed so far by the likes of Samsung. and especially Apple. are coming under pressure, which is why there’s been so much chatter lately about the possibility of a cheaper iPhone.

Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook has tried to deflect such talk by saying he isn’t interested in “revenue for revenue’s sake,” yet the company’s previous actions speak volumes. Apple did launch the cheaper iPad Mini last year in response to pressure from Google and Amazon, who together set the new price agenda on that category with their own smaller and less expensive devices, the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire, respectively.

Phones and tablets are inevitably following computers into commoditization. Apple may still charge a premium for its products, but it will ultimately have to settle for a relatively small market share as a result, just as it has in computers. There is also a limit to that premium – with the likes of Google and Amazon setting the pace, the respective days of $700 smartphones and $500 tablets are numbered.

Which brings us back to BlackBerry. With shrinking margins on the horizon, why would anyone want to be in the smartphone or tablet market? Monolithic conglomerates such as Google, Samsung and Apple can afford it because such devices are but pieces of their much larger wholes. They can take a bath on phones and tablets since they pay off in other ways, including keeping people within their larger ecosystems.

For smaller, single-purpose players such as RIM or Nokia, which don’t really have anything else to offer consumers, that low-margin future isn’t very appealing.

It’s no surprise, then, that RIM may be looking to pull an IBM, where it would sell off its hardware business to focus instead on software and services. It’s ironic that the same company involved in IBM’s computer spinoff nearly a decade ago – China’s Lenovo – is the latest potential dance partner to be attached to this idea. And it’s not just speculation; RIM CEO Thorsten Heins says he is considering doing exactly that.

The smartest thing currently going on at RIM is the development of BlackBerry Fusion, the toolkit that lets businesses manage all the different phones being brought in by employees. This bring-your-own-device niche is one which RIM’s current competitors are unlikely to enter – and it’s potentially a high-margin business, at that.

Put these trends together with Heins’ oddly-timed comments about a potential hardware sale, and it’s tough to get excited about this week’s BlackBerry 10 launch. It may just be a lot of sound and fury that ultimately won’t matter much, since RIM’s real interests – and future – lay elsewhere.

Five things that cost the BlackBerry its dominance

By Michael Oliveira, The Canadian Press - Monday, January 28, 2013 at 5:21 AM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – Research in Motion went from being a company revered worldwide for its innovative phones — coveted status symbols proudly carried by world leaders, executives and celebrities — to an industry also-ran that’s down to its last chance with BlackBerry 10.

How did RIM fritter away its marketshare? Here are five factors that eroded its dominance.

1. A failed transition from the corporate world into the consumer market

Before users became accustomed to fast and unfettered mobile web access, wireless messaging on a BlackBerry was the ultimate in high-tech connectivity. The ability to send and receive email on the go and trade BlackBerry Messenger texts spawned the CrackBerry moniker, and everyone in the corporate world had a BlackBerry or lusted for one. But RIM failed to catch the wave of consumer smartphone adoption and its rudimentary support of multimedia and the mobile web eventually looked pathetic beside Apple’s iPhone, Google Android phones and other devices. Only now with BlackBerry 10 does it appear that RIM has caught up to its rivals, but can it keep pace as Apple and Android continue to innovate?

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RIM turns to BlackBerry loyals in business community for new phones

By The Canadian Press - Monday, January 28, 2013 at 4:16 AM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – They call them the BlackBerry loyals: longtime smartphone users who have clung to their aging Curve and Bold models through the most turbulent days of the company.

In the coming months, Research In Motion (TSX:RIM) is certainly going to need them.

Despite what some critics suggest, there are still plenty of smartphone users around the world who sport BlackBerrys. In fact, there’s about 80 million of them according to RIM’s most recent quarterly subscriber numbers.

Among them are millions of enterprise customers, mostly employees at government, corporate and private businesses who were handed a BlackBerry by their employer. Together, they were the BlackBerry users who helped the device become a symbol of mobile communications innovation, and kept the company relatively stable as its share of the consumer market tumbled in North America and Europe.

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Research In Motion stock continues remarkable comeback, analyst revises estimate

By The Canadian Press - Friday, January 18, 2013 at 5:09 PM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – Shares of Research In Motion (TSX:RIM) raced higher on Friday as one of the company’s most prominent analysts gave a stronger vote of confidence to the new BlackBerry launch.

The Waterloo, Ont.-based company’s stock gained seven per cent, or $1.03, to close at $15.71 on the Toronto Stock Exchange, pushing towards levels it hasn’t seen in more than a year.

Jeffries & Co. analyst Peter Misek raised his target estimate to US$19.50 per share, from $13.

In a note to investors, Misek said he expects RIM to open its corporate BlackBerry email services to iPhone and Android devices, which would be a new revenue stream for the company.

“This change, we believe, is unknown or not well understood but is important,” he said.

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Kitchener defends special treatment of BlackBerry-maker over advertising

By The Canadian Press - Thursday, January 17, 2013 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments

WATERLOO, Ont. – The City of Kitchener is defending its decision to get behind BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (TSX:RIM) in the lead-up to the launch of its new smartphones.

In an article published by the Waterloo Region Record daily newspaper, the city says it hasn’t sold out to corporate interests by making a temporary exception to local policies about corporate advertisements.

The concern involves a decision by Kitchener city leaders earlier this week that allows RIM to decorate light poles in the city’s downtown core with banners to promote BlackBerry and thank the community for its support. Continue…

U.K.-based network says router glitch affected some BlackBerry customers

By The Canadian Press - Friday, January 11, 2013 at 11:26 AM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – Vodaphone, a major U.K.-based client of Research In Motion (TSX:RIM), experienced technical problems Friday that disrupted BlackBerry service to customers in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Vodaphone PLC said the issue was caused by a router error and that service was being restored.

“We apologize to customers for any inconvenience caused and we will provide updates as necessary,” Vodaphone said in an emailed statement.

RIM said it was working with Vodaphone to resolve the issue. Continue…

AirWatch: The company that’s killing RIM

By Matt Kwong - Monday, January 7, 2013 at 8:59 AM - 0 Comments

ANDREW HNATH

In the mobile tech trade, a business built on communication, rescinding a party invite is one way to send a frosty message. So when John Marshall, CEO of the Atlanta-based software firm AirWatch LLC, learned that Research In Motion Ltd. had “disinvited” him and six executives from the BlackBerry World expo last spring—a week before the May 1 conference, and with their Orlando flights and hotels already booked—the snub was obvious.

“Now we’re seen as a direct competitor,” Marshall says. RIM refunded the airline tickets. AirWatch, a “Bronze sponsor” since BlackBerry World in 2011, yanked its funding from the 2012 conference. The BlackBerry maker’s hostility toward the little-known southern start-up was telling. Theirs is a see-saw relationship. When big organizations dump RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server—the once-pioneering software for handling workers’ emails—they contract AirWatch to protect the data on mobile devices like iPhones and Android phones. Consumer choice is driving the migration, says Jefferies analyst Peter Misek, who tracks RIM. “As RIM’s fortunes have faded, these alternative smartphone platforms have risen.” Continue…

Updated BlackBerry Curve smartphone to hit U.S. market

By The Canadian Press - Thursday, January 3, 2013 at 4:53 PM - 0 Comments

TORONTO – A new BlackBerry smartphone is headed to U.S. stores later this month, but it’ll look especially familiar to most users.

Research In Motion (TSX:RIM) said Thursday it will launch the BlackBerry Curve 9315, a slightly updated version of the keypad phones already on the market, in the United States.

The launch is exclusively through U.S. carrier T-Mobile, and a release date is set for Jan. 23. Continue…

Nokia and RIM agree to new patent licences, settling old disputes

By The Associated Press - Friday, December 21, 2012 at 9:11 AM - 0 Comments

HELSINKI – Nokia Corp. says it has entered into a new licence agreement with smartphone rival Research In Motion (TSX:RIM) which will end all existing patent litigation between the two struggling companies.

Nokia said today that the agreement includes a “one-time payment and on-going payments, all from RIM to Nokia,” adding that the terms were confidential.

Last month, the Finnish company sued the Blackberry maker for breach of contract in Britain, the United States and Canada over cellular patents they agreed on in 2003. Continue…

Skipping out on the Blackberry 10 hype

By macleans.ca - Saturday, December 8, 2012 at 7:50 AM - 0 Comments

With its much-anticipated new smartphones still weeks from release, Research In Motion found itself under attack yet again last week. Rival Nokia filed a lawsuit against the BlackBerry maker after a Swedish arbitration panel ruled RIM was in breach of a key wireless patent. At the same time, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer was widely quoted dissing RIM’s phones: “We literally are moving the company from BlackBerrys to smartphones,” said Mayer in an interview with Fortune.

Yet despite the bad press, things are suddenly looking up for the Waterloo, Ont.-based firm. Goldman Sachs recently raised its rating on RIM from “neutral” to “buy.” Market confidence has been quietly rising. National Bank and Jefferies have also boosted their outlooks. Over the past two months, RIM shares have risen 75 per cent, to over $11.

Investors don’t expect RIM to shoot back to the top of the mobile industry when BlackBerry 10 arrives. But it has fallen so far in recent years that even a modest turnaround seems a safe bet that could yield results. “We now assess a 30 per cent chance of success for BB10 given positive early reviews, broad-based carrier support, attractive features and interest by carriers and consumers in broadening the field beyond Android/iOS,” said Goldman Sachs in its report.

#BlackBerrybychoice? Really?

By Peter Nowak - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 at 12:28 PM - 0 Comments

(Robert Galbraith/Reuters)

Way back yonder in journalism school, oh, about two decades ago, there was a funny division of students. In the undergraduate program, you had to choose a specialty stream at the halfway point of your four years. In those halcyon pre-internet days, that meant picking either broadcast, magazine or print. The problem was, the first two accepted very few students, so those who didn’t get in were shunted off to print where the majority of unwashed journalism students resided.

As a result, there were a good number of disgruntled wannabe broadcast and magazine students in print, but a good portion of us were also hard-core newspaper fans for whom the stream was the first and only choice. We jokingly considered broadcast students to be shallow people who only wanted to be on TV, while magazine students and their high-falutin’ big words and surfeit of adjectives were just artsy hipsters. To us, the people who were “print by choice” were the only real journalists.

As funny as those youthful days now seem, it’s doubly humorous to see a large company adopting that same sort of borderline immature stance in its marketing. If you follow the smartphone field, you’ve probably recognized that I’m talking about Research In Motion’s “BlackBerry by choice” campaign.

Earlier this year, RIM insisted that many of its woes stemmed from poor marketing – that it simply wasn’t doing a good job at pointing out all the positives of BlackBerry. To that effect, the company went out and hired a new chief marketing officer, Frank Boulben, to fix the image problem.

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RIM shares down on report says BB10 phones won’t come until March

By The Canadian Press - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 at 1:12 PM - 0 Comments

Research In Motion shares are down four per cent after an analyst said the next generation of BlackBerrys won’t hit shelves until March.

Jeffries and Co. analyst Peter Misek tells specialty business TV channel BNN that timing would delay any potential licensing deals.

RIM (TSX:RIM) shares were down 32 cents to $7.74 in early afternoon trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

The Waterloo, Ont-based company says it’s on track to deliver BlackBerry 10 phones in the first three months of the year.

But some observers were anticipating a Januay or February release — with sales potentially bolstering financial results in RIM’s fourth quarter, which ends March 2.

RIM chief executive Thorsten Heins has said a touchscreen model would launch first while the keyboard version, known in the tech community as Qwerty, will come about one to two months later.

Research In Motion has been plagued by coolly received launches for products such as the PlayBook tablet and delays in bringing the BB10 operating system and devices to market.

It has also lost market share to Apple’s iPhone and devices running the Android operating system.

Last month, RIM reported that its quarterly loss was US$235 million or 45 cents per diluted share compared with a profit of $329 million or 63 cents per share a year ago.

The company’s adjusted loss was $142 million or 27 cents per share. While large, RIM’s loss was still much better than the 47 cents per share loss expected by analysts polled by Bloomberg.

The company reports third quarter results on Dec. 20.

Don’t call the Blackberry 10 a comeback

By Chris Sorensen - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 at 5:15 AM - 0 Comments

Robert Galbraith/Reuters

It’s just before 10 a.m. and Andrew MacLeod, the Canadian managing director for Research In Motion Ltd., is sitting in a diner in downtown Toronto. For the first time in recent memory, he has some “good” news to talk about. A day earlier, the beleaguered BlackBerry-maker reported a quarterly loss of $235 million—less than many had feared. It also added about two million new subscribers, mostly in developing countries. RIM’s battered shares, which have traded as low as $6.22 in recent weeks, shot up 13 per cent.

While none of that means RIM is back from the brink—far from it, in fact—it does suggest the Waterloo, Ont.-based company may still be around in early 2013 to launch its long-overdue BlackBerry 10 smartphone, which seemed far from certain just a few weeks earlier. “We’re entering lab testing with our carrier partners next month,” says MacLeod. “Then we’ll be gearing up for a series of really big commercial platform launches. It’s a really exciting time for us.”

BlackBerry fans, a dwindling crowd, seem cautiously optimistic. Developers at a recent conference reacted positively to demo phones running BlackBerry 10, despite first being treated to a bizarre music video featuring Alec Saunders, RIM’s head of developer relations, singing a nerdy, BlackBerry-themed version of REO Speedwagon’s Keep on Loving You. Unlike Apple’s iPhone, or devices running Google’s Android software, BlackBerry 10 allows users to slide back-and-forth between applications (without the need for a “home” button) and check their inboxes by swiping away the screen they’re viewing. “It fundamentally changes the paradigm of how a smartphone should be used,” says independent tech analyst Carmi Levy. “The problem for RIM isn’t developing unique technology. It’s convincing people to at least give it a try.”

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BlackBerry ranked near the bottom among global brands

By Hugh McKenna, The Canadian Press - Tuesday, October 2, 2012 at 6:17 PM - 0 Comments

(David Manning/Reuters)

TORONTO – The BlackBerry brand that once dominated the smartphone landscape has plummeted nearly to the bottom of the latest ranking of global brands by an international consultancy.

Interbrand said Tuesday that Research In Motion’s BlackBerry is now 93rd on its list of 100 most valuable global brands, down from 56th in 2011. It put the brand’s value at $3.9 billion, down 39 per cent from a year ago.

The top three spots on Interbrand’s Best Global Brands report for 2012 are held by Coca-Cola, valued at almost $78 billion; Apple at more than $76 billion, and IBM at more than $75 billion.

Both Coca-Cola and IBM were unchanged from the positions they held in 2011, while Apple jumped to No. 2 from No. 8 “thanks to stellar sales in both developed and emerging markets,” Interbrand said in a release.

The big drop for BlackBerry, the brand name for products produced by Waterloo.,Ont.-based RIM (TSX:RIM), followed a drop last year to the 56th spot from 54 in 2010. BlackBerry placed 63rd in 2009.

Interbrand noted that BlackBerry shipments are down 41 per cent in the past year and the brand’s market share now stands at 4.8 per cent globally, compared with 11.5 per cent a year ago.

“In order to survive, the brand must clearly demonstrate its relevance and value in today’s crowded smartphone market,” said Alfred DuPuy, managing director, Interbrand Canada.

“If BlackBerry can deliver a truly innovative experience designed for today’s mobile professional, it will send the message that the brand is committed to the (business to business) market on which it had originally built its success.”

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