SYDNEY: BlackBerry mobile company can launch four new smart phones this year and a brand new package of cross-platform applications because it continues its “philosophical” shift to create computer code.
The company unveiled its BlackBerry Leap phone at the Mobile World Congress wireless show in Barcelona. The “low-to-mid” market phone can precede sale in Europe and in Gregorian calendar month. 3 additional phones can follow.
The Leap, a five-inch touch-screen device that comes in white and gray, can value $275, but half what the most recent smart phones from Apple and Samsung choose. It will be sold-out via European carriers in Gregorian calendar month, BlackBerry aforesaid.
“BlackBerry Leap was designed specifically for mobile professionals World Health Organization see their Smartphone device as a strong and sturdy productivity tool that additionally safeguards sensitive communications the least bit times,” Ron Louks, BlackBerry’s president of devices and rising solutions, aforesaid during a statement.
BlackBerry aforesaid the phone’s battery can give “25 hours of serious use.”
Chief executive officer John Chen took over the company in late 2013, at a time when BlackBerry’s share of the global Smartphone market had fallen to less than one per cent.
He brought back the iconic physical keyboard and oversaw the 2014 release of two new phones, the Passport and the Classic, higher-priced devices that went on sale at AT&T Inc. in the U.S. last month.
BlackBerry is also boosting investment in encryption and privacy features of its software to push its security and messaging programs to all devices, including iPhones, iPads and Android and Windows gadgets.
“We’re going to make sure our software technology addresses everybody’s phones and everybody’s end point,” Chen.
He aims to get BlackBerry programs on connected cars, non-BlackBerry phones and wearable devices to boost the company’s transition from a slumping phone maker to a more profitable software company.
Still, hardware revenue for the quarter through Nov. 29 dropped 24 per cent to $361 million from a year earlier.
