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BlackBerry executive reaffirms commitment to the smartphone business

BlackBerry executive reaffirms commitment to the smartphone business

By Kunal Dua | Updated: 27 September 2013 12:00 IST

BlackBerry Vice President for Developer Relations Alec Saunders used the keynote address at BlackBerry Jam developer conference in Hong Kong on Thursday to reiterate the company's commitment to providing the best smartphone experience to its customers.

BlackBerry's developer conference kicked off on Thursday in Hong Kong with events from earlier this week at the top of everyone's mind. On Monday, BlackBerry announced that it had accepted a $4.7 billion buyout offer from a consortium led by its largest investor, Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited. While a firm deal is expected to be announced on November 8, Fairfax is believed to have started the due diligence process while BlackBerry has said it will continue looking for a better suitor in the interim.

The news came days after BlackBerry said it expects to report a quarterly loss nearing a billion dollars, and that it plans to cut 4,500 jobs as it aims to focus its attention on the enterprise market and become a more niche player.

Needless to say, the developers assembled for BlackBerry's biggest developer focussed-event in Asia had a lot of questions on their mind and Saunders used his keynote address to address some of these concerns. He said that the company was committed to the BlackBerry 10 platform and to providing developers with the best possible tools so, together, they can deliver a great smartphone experience to end users.

Responding to a query later about company's shift in focus to the enterprise market, Saunders said that the BlackBerry 10 platform has always been enterprise and prosumers-centric, so not much should be read in the recent announcement. Saunders said the company was right to focus their energies on this segment, as their experience with BlackBerry 10 so far had shown that these customers are more engaged with the app ecosystem.

Saunders shared some statistics that corroborate this theory, saying that downloads per user where twice as many on BlackBerry 10 compared to BlackBerry 7 OS. The percentage of paid downloads is up 5 times, and revenue per download is up 7 times on BlackBerry 10, compared to the BlackBerry 7 OS, which is good news for the developers, Saunders added.

(Photo courtesy: Ashish Bhatia)

Disclosure: BlackBerry paid for our flights and hotel for BlackBerry Jam in Hong Kong.

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