Articles about BlackBerry

I will admit to being intrigued by BBM. I have never owned a BlackBerry smartphone (nor do I have plans to buy one) so I have never had the chance to find out what all the fuss is about. But, after the Canadian maker revealed that the service will also arrive on Android and iPhone, my interest piqued.

And I am definitely not the only one who is interested. Following the second release on rival platforms, in its first 24 hours on Apple App Store and Google Play BBM surpassed 10 million downloads, which is impressive for a service that only had 60 million users before the second half of the year.

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BlackBerry has relaunched BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) for Android and iOS, almost a month after its previous attempt was derailed by a leaked edition.

This time the company appears to be keeping more control over events, in particular by making some users wait for an official notification email before they can use the app.

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According to a new survey conducted by J.D. Power among US mobile operator subscribers, Apple and Samsung lead the pack on "overall satisfaction performance". The iPhone maker ranks first for AT&T and Verizon customers while Samsung takes the top spot for Sprint and T-Mobile subscribers.

The J.D. Power survey identifies Apple and Samsung as the sole smartphone vendors to rank above the average value on all four counts -- performance, exterior design, features and ease of use. The findings of the survey are based, according to J.D. Power, on the experiences of 16,421 users who are customers of the aforementioned four-largest local mobile operators and have had their current smartphone for less than a year.

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As expected, BlackBerry is reporting a quarterly loss of nearly $1 billion as the struggling firm releases its fiscal results for the second quarter. The company managed to ship 3.7 million handsets, giving a revenue of $1.6 billion. This is a drop of 49 percent from the first quarter ($3.1 billion) and 45 percent down on the same period last year ($2.9 billion). Overall, there are operating losses amounting to $965 million.

A large proportion of the units shipped were BlackBerry 10 handsets sent out to wholesalers and mobile firms, and profits from these will not be counted until sold to customers. In Q2, 5.9 million smartphones were placed in customers' hands, and this includes handset shipments from previous quarters. The poor results had been widely predicted, and BlackBerry cancelled its scheduled conference call.

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Earlier this week, the Prem Watsa-led Fairfax group announced that it was making a $4.7 billion bid to take BlackBerry private. This followed BlackBerry's pre-announcement of disastrous Q2 results that showed smartphone shipments crashing to 3.7 million units and total revenue collapsing to $1.6 billion.

The company also took an inventory charge of roughly $1 billion because of unsold BlackBerry 10 devices. However, since the funding for the deal has not yet been secured, it may also have been a pre-announcement to halt the company's stock decline.

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Tomorrow was supposed to the day BlackBerry held a conference call and webcast to discuss its Q2 earnings, but the company has now cancelled this. Complete second quarter financial results will still be released tomorrow (Friday, 27 September) at 7:00am ET, but there will now be no public follow-up immediately afterwards.

More details will be released, however, when the company publishes the Management’s Discussion and Analysis and consolidated financial statements next week.

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Technology moves at a feverish pace. It feels like only yesterday that the iconic Blackberry was the market leader for smartphones. However, fast-forward to 2013 and we see a struggling company laying off 4,500 employees and losing close to a billion dollars in one quarter alone. On August 13, Blackberry (formerly known as RIM) announced the possibility of selling itself, hinting at strategic alternatives.

Today, Blackberry announces that "it has signed a letter of intent agreement under which a consortium to be led by Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited has offered to acquire the company subject to due diligence". In other words, it is exploring being bought by Fairfax.

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In an effort to lure potential buyers who prefer large smartphones and steer its customers away from the flock of new Android flagships, Canadian maker BlackBerry today unveiled its biggest smartphone yet. It's called the BlackBerry Z30 and comes with the latest BB 10 OS version -- 10.2 -- out-of-the-box.

Here are some of the key specs: 5-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 720 by 1280; 1.7 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor; 2 GB of RAM; 2,880 mAh battery; 16 GB of internal storage; 8 MP back-facing camera; 2 MP front-facing camera and 4G LTE cellular connectivity. For those who have kept a close eye on the Canadian brand, the BlackBerry Z30 is one of the worst kept secrets of 2013 so far, with numerous rumors and leaks describing it in the past couple of months.

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AT&T finds itself on the receiving end of an internet backlash after tweeting an advertisement for the BlackBerry Z10 that used 9/11 imagery. On the anniversary of the tragedy that saw the Twin Towers fall, the US phone giant posted the ad on Twitter -- the tweet has since been removed -- which featured the Tribute in Light memorial under the heading Never Forget. A similar post was also made on Facebook -- this has too been removed.

The ill-advised marketing move has backfired however. The company's Twitter feed is now filled with vitriolic responses from those sickened by the imagery. Search Twitter for AT&T and there are tweets from thousands of users who can only be described as being seriously pissed and deeply offended. On the BetaNews team, New Yorker Brian said that it was horrible and that he hated it.

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The BlackBerry Q10 was officially unveiled by the Canadian maker during a special event held in late-January. But, sadly for impatient US fans, the QWERTY smartphone only arrived in June at local mobile operators Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T. Furthermore, Sprint subscribers had to wait even longer to get their hands on the new device.

Good news! Starting today, the BlackBerry Q10 is available at Sprint, after "just" seven months since its unveiling. The US mobile operator offers the smartphone for $99.99, alongside a traditional two-year agreement.

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Worldwide mobile phone sales totaled 435 million units in the second quarter of 2013, according to Gartner, notching up a moderate 3.6 percent increase over the 420 million units sold in the same period last year.

The big news however, is smartphone sales finally exceeded those of feature phones, with the former selling 225 million units, up 46.5 percent from the 153 million sold in the second quarter of 2012, and the latter managing just 210 million units for a 21 percent drop year-over-year.

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The days of the CrackBerry are well and truly over. Years of declining sales as smartphone users move to iPhones and Android devices for their telecommunication needs has left the Canadian company floundering. In Europe, BlackBerry handsets account for just 2.2 percent of smartphone sales. In the face of stiff competition in a fierce market, BlackBerry is considering a potential sale in a bid to turn around the company's fortunes.

BlackBerry has seen its market share steadily dropping off over the years. In the second quarter of 2013, this stood as just 2.9 percent, down from 4.9 percent in the same period the previous year. A lot of hope was pinned on the launch of the BB10 platform and IDC's research shows that the company has benefited from steady progress since its release.

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BlackBerry's update streak continues. The Canadian maker just announced a refreshed version of its BB 10.1 smartphone operating system, dubbed "maintenance release", which is touted to deliver a significant number of changes and improvements. The roll-out kicked off yesterday in the Asia Pacific region and is expected to finish in the US, starting at the end of the summer.

The most noteworthy enhancements, which BlackBerry 10.1 maintenance release adds, center on BB Balance, Hub, World and social network integration -- Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The changes are mostly designed to improve content discovery, messaging and security. Let's take a look at what's new.

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According to a new report from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, Microsoft's Windows Phone scored another victory over BlackBerry, as in Q2 2013, following Android and iOS, the tiled mobile operating system was the third most popular choice for European smartphone buyers, in major local markets.

In Q2 2013, 6.9 percent of European smartphone buyers from France, Germany, Italy, Spain and UK bought Windows Phone handsets. Meanwhile, only 2.2 percent decided to purchase BlackBerry smartphones. "Windows Phone continues to consolidate its position as the third OS globally, with strong performances in Britain and France where it has 8.6 percent and 9.0 percent of the market respectively", according to the Kantar Worldpanel ComTech report. But it's not all good news though, as Windows Phone's market share dropped slightly in the US.

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Popular social network Twitter just released a refreshed BlackBerry 10 app, which now finally brings support for traditional features, already available to those relying on the Android, iOS or Windows Phone counterpart, like multiple user accounts and the ability to save embedded images.

The latest update is designed to bring the BlackBerry 10 app closer, in terms of functionality, to Twitter's offerings from other platforms. It now "helps you connect more seamlessly to the people and topics you care about", according to the popular social network. Let's take a look at the complete changelog.

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