In last-ditch effort, BlackBerry launches Classic phone

BlackBerry goes back to its roots with a smart phone that features a traditional keyboard.

|
Bebeto Matthews/AP
BlackBerry CEO John Chen introduces the company's new phone, the BlackBerry Classic, during a news conference, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2014, in New York.

BlackBerry is returning to its roots with a new phone that features a traditional keyboard at a time when rival Apple and Android phones — and most smartphone customers — have embraced touch screens.

With the Classic, BlackBerry is courting its core customer, the business user. The physical keyboard is something traditional BlackBerry users prefer because they find it easier than touch screens to type with. The company is also emphasizing battery life and security.

"A lot of people say the Classic is aiming for loyal customers. And that is true," CEO John Chen said at the gadget's launch event, tellingly held in New York City's Financial District. But he also invited people who haven't used a BlackBerry "especially people who are young," to try the BlackBerry Classic.

Pioneered in 1999 with the launch of the RIM 950, BlackBerry changed the culture by allowing on-the-go business people to access email wirelessly. Then came a new generation of competing smartphones, and suddenly the BlackBerry looked ancient. Apple showed that phones can handle much more than email and phone calls. Blackberry was late in overhauling its operating system to compete.

BlackBerry now holds a small fraction of the U.S. smartphone market after commanding a nearly 50 percent share as recently as 2009.

The company is trying to stay relevant on making hardware even as it tries to transform into an enterprise security and consumer software company. Whether the Classic will sell enough to keep it in the hardware business is unclear.

"It's going to be a niche product based around enterprise, based around security and pockets of the world where there is still strengths. The future of this company is not the hardware," BGC analyst Colin Gillis said.

The BlackBerry Classic is available for sale starting Wednesday for $449 in the U.S. and 499 Canadian dollars in Canada through Amazon.com and BlackBerry.com. It will come later to AT&T and Verizon.

BlackBerry has been expanding its efforts to sell mobile-security software on its rivals' smartphones and tablets to help counter the waning popularity of its own devices.

And on the hardware side, BlackBerry partnered with Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that assembles products in vast factories in China. Foxconn, known for its manufacturing contract work on Apple's iPhones and iPads, jointly designs and manufactures most BlackBerry devices and manages inventory of the devices in an agreement that offloads much of BlackBerry's manufacturing costs. Foxconn is making the Classic for BlackBerry.

Chen, who took over as chief executive 13 months ago, has set a goal of selling 10 million phones a year. In comparison, Apple sold 39.3 million iPhones over three months in the third quarter.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to In last-ditch effort, BlackBerry launches Classic phone
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2014/1217/In-last-ditch-effort-BlackBerry-launches-Classic-phone
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe