BlackBerry CEO unveils new, low-priced Q5 before full house at Jam conference

Published May 14, 2013

Associated Press

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  The new touchscreen BlackBerry Z10 smartphone, which the company hopes will mark a turnaround in its battle against the iPhone and Google's Android.AP Photo/Mark Lennihan

TORONTO –  The CEO of BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion will deliver a keynote speech amid speculation that he'll introduce a lower-priced version of the BlackBerry at the company's annual three-day conference in Orlando, Fla.

CEO Thorsten Heins is set to speak Tuesday morning.  RIM unveiled new, versatile BlackBerrys earlier this year after delays allowed Apple and others to dominate the smartphone market.

The BlackBerry, pioneered in 1999, had been the dominant smartphone for on-the-go business people and consumers before the iPhone debuted in 2007 and showed that phones can handle much more than email and calls. RIM faced numerous delays modernizing its operating system. During that time, it had to cut more than 5,000 jobs and saw shareholder wealth decline by more than $70 billion.

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Pre-orders of the keyboard-enabled BlackBerry Q10 start in Canada

Published April 09, 2013

Associated Press

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  Jan. 29, 2013: Blackberry CEO Thorsten Heins presents the BlackBerry Z10 and the BlackBerry Q10.Blackberry

TORONTO –  Research In Motion says a keyboard version of new the BlackBerry will be available in Canada in the coming weeks and that major carriers are announcing pre-orders.

RIM said in a statement on Tuesday that details on when the BlackBerry Q10 will be available in other markets will follow soon. Presales are already under way in the U.K.

Chief executive Thorsten Heins told The Associated Press last month that the keyboard version won't be released in the United States until late May or June because of carrier testing. That development could complicate RIM's turnaround efforts.

Even as the BlackBerry has fallen behind rivals in recent years, many BlackBerry users have stayed loyal because they prefer a physical keyboard over the touch screen.

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BlackBerry CEO says iPhone Is passé

Published March 18, 2013

AllThingsD

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  Is BlackBerry cooler than iPhone now? CEO Thorsten Heins thinks so.AP

BlackBerry has a daunting task ahead of it as it struggles to reverse its declining fortunes in the smartphone market. But the release of its next-generation BlackBerry 10 operating system and the first smartphone to run it have put a bit of swagger back into the company’s step.

It seems that while BlackBerry has its head down, focused on executing its turnaround plan, it’s not above raising it to talk smack about its rivals.

In an interview with the Australian Financial Review, BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said that Apple’s iPhone is not the state-of-the-art smartphone it once was. In fact, it’s starting to look a little dusty.

“The rate of innovation is so high in our industry that if you don’t innovate at that speed you can be replaced pretty quickly,” Heins said. “The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about, is now five years old.”

The rate of innovation is so high in our industry that if you don’t innovate at that speed you can be replaced pretty quickly.

Read more at AllThingsD.

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Samsung's new target: BlackBerry

Samsung has spent the last several years luring smartphone consumers away from Apple's iPhones. Now, the South Korean giant is taking aim at Research In Motion's still-formidable grip on the world's most security-conscious government and corporate clients.

Samsung is wooing chief information officers and government agencies, promising its phones—which run off Google's Android operating system—are just as secure as BlackBerrys. It has hired dozens of executives and salespeople from rivals and from mobile-security companies, while investing in other smaller, mobile security and data firms.

And it has tweaked a massive marketing campaign aimed at consumers, airing ads during the recent National Football League playoffs that poked fun specifically at the BlackBerry.

Samsung executives in South Korea have made enterprise sales a "top three priority" company-wide, said Tim Wagner, Samsung's Dallas-based general manager and vice president for enterprise sales, who was hired away from RIM in 2010. The company has recently closed deals for thousands of company-issued Samsung smartphones and tablets for big corporations like American Airlines Inc., Waste Management Inc., and Boston Scientific Corp.

IDC, a market researcher, found over 50 percent of smartphones shipped to corporate customers last year were iPhones, while Samsung shipped 16 percent of that market. RIM, which had dominated the sector just a few years ago, saw its share shrink to 10 percent last year, IDC said.

Read more about the growing rivalry between Samsung and BlackBerry at The Wall Street Journal.

View the original article here