Shares in the maker of BlackBerry smartphones slid even as it began its attempted turnround by launching two new touchscreen devices and its new BlackBerry 10 operating system at co-ordinated international events.
The handsets – the Z10 and the Q10 – will be available in the US in March. The touchscreen-only Z10 will be available in the UK today.
The shares fell 5 per cent as the Canadian group announced it was changing its name from Research In Motion to BlackBerry, to underscore its commitment.
By the conclusion of the simulcast launch, the shares were down 8 per cent.
“Today represents a new day in the history of BlackBerry,” said Thorsten Heins, the chief executive. At the New York event, he described the launch of BB10 and the smartphones as a new start for the company, which has seen its market share decline in recent years.
Revamped products
The handsets and operating system are being launched under the tagline “redesigned, re-engineered, reinvented,” underscoring Mr Heins’s hope that the launch “is not the finishing line, it’s the starting line” for the company.
Mr Heins and BlackBerry’s board have bet the future of the company on the success of BlackBerry 10 devices and on the new operating system that powers them. BlackBerry is hoping the operating system will enable it to outpace Microsoft’s rival Windows Phone OS and become the third main smartphone operating system behind Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS.
However, analysts are divided over whether this will be enough to enable the company to survive or whether it will be forced to take more drastic action.
Analysts see the launch as the last real chance for BlackBerry to reverse a precipitous slide in market share and compete more effectively with the iPhone and Android-powered devices, including Samsung’s Galaxy family, which dominate the smartphone market.
BlackBerry’s share of the market has dwindled to less than 2 per cent in its core US market as consumers and corporate customers have abandoned the ageing BlackBerry product portfolio.
If the products fail, they say BlackBerry may be forced to abandon the hardware market and focus on licensing and service revenues, or sell the business as a whole or in parts.
BlackBerry, which has shed 5,000 jobs and cut $1 billion off its operating costs in preparation for its turnround, has also focused on ensuring there are lots of apps and content to support the new hardware.
– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013
