Blackberry is undergoing a resurgence under the leadership of John Chen and the fruits of their new strategy are resonating well with investors. No one really knows how many Blackberry Passport devices were sold, but 200,000 units were gone right away. The main Blackberry website has been sold out every day of the week since launch and the upcoming Classic phone is highly anticipated with its core customers.
Blackberry is trying to liquidate their current inventory of older phones by having a fire sale during the month of November. The BlackBerry’s Q10 price dropped one hundred dollars to $199, ahead of the release of the Classic. Likely, Blackberry saw no need for a single keyboard device competing for the same market. The Classic features the inclusion of navigation buttons and trackpad, something that was missing from the Q10.
The Z30 price drop is very dramatic and the phone itself was a victim of bad timing. When it got released the Blackberry leadership was changing and the company did not allocate enough of a marketing budget to run any kind of sustained media campaign. Can this be a sign to come that the company might be developing a phablet type of device?
The two devices Blackberry is getting behind and pushing in a big way is the Passport and Classic. I like the fact it hearkens back to the glory days of Blackberry, where all of their phones had a great keyboard.
According to SeekingAlpha “Investors are not convinced shares of BlackBerry should trade above the $10.50 level. There are still concerns of falling revenue from the services division. The company will make up for the drop first through BES 12 subscriptions. On the hardware sales side, speculation of strong Passport sales could finally push shares towards back to the $15 level. This is unlikely in the short-term. BlackBerry still needs a phablet or a tablet-like smart phone. This signals the company is confident with the BBOS 10.3 release. More importantly, it implies BlackBerry is confident demand for its family of devices will improve now, and heading into 2015.”
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.