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BlackBerry has launched a new smartphone that goes back to the basics.
Today the Waterloo-based smartphone maker has unveiled the BlackBerry Classic. It’s a trip back in time for many users: the new device is designed to look and work like an updated version of the BlackBerry Bold, the company’s best selling device when it was released in 2011.
BlackBerry is hoping to win back customers who were once their most loyal users. The Classic is advertised as a return to fundamentals. It restores some of the key features of older devices that disappeared with the release of the BlackBerry 10 operating system.
The iconic keyboard, trackpad, back and call buttons are on the phone as well as a newly updated version of the game brick-breaker.
CEO John Chen’s focus since joining the company a year ago has been to improve the finances of BlackBerry. In a press release about their latest edition, he said: “we listened closely to our customers’ feedback to ensure we are delivering the technologies to power them through their day – and that feedback led directly to the development of BlackBerry Classic.”
Although it is very familiar in appearance to the old BlackBerry Bold, the classic has an internet browser that is three times faster and 50 percent longer battery life. BlackBerry says the classic is now available through local carriers around the world. On BlackBerry’s online store the phone is listed at $499.
Marvin Ryder of the DeGroote School of Business spoke to CHCH News about what the Classic could mean to BlackBerry. Here is a transcript of that interview.
Bob Cowan, CHCH News: What do you think of the timing of this?
MR: I would say the timing is not good if you are approaching the Christmas season. This was an announcement that if you really wanted to get into the big buying season should have happened a month ago. I am worried about that.
More to the point Bob, this is not an offensive move, this is a defensive move by this company. Even though the world seems to belong to smartphones there is a dedicated group, call them a niche of people who really, really, really love their old BlackBerries. Because there was nothing done with the old BlackBerry Bolds, they were getting older and older, and the threat was they would leave for another device.
BlackBerry has said ‘let’s shore up our defenses and let’s keep those consumers in the full by giving them what they want. We are giving them the same phone but with fresh guts that will help it last longer and more battery life and a sharper camera, not the sharpest. And let’s give those things to those people and add that to our Passport.’ Analysts believe BlackBerry will sell 8 million phones in the next year. That’s not a trivial amount. On the other hand that is roughly what Apple sold on the first weekend of the iPhone 6.
So what we are seeing is a company that is clearly becoming a niche player. They are not going to appeal to everybody. In fact, they are not going to appeal to 90 per cent of users, but for a small chunk of people they want to be the phone of choice and that’s where they’re going.
CHCH: You talk about the camera and it is a business phone, but the camera is always lagging. It could never compete with what is out there today. A year ago we were talking about this — actually less than a year ago we were talking about the shift to actually getting out of hardware, but then comes the Passport and now this.
MR: I guess I can call these, for lack of a better term, hail mary passes. Depending on the success of the Classic and the Passport, we will see whether they live up to that expectation of the 8 million units. If the 8 million were to become 4 or 2 million units, it isn’t that far down the road that I think that prediction they will get out of the hardware altogether will come true.
Really the bottom line is, how dedicated are those BlackBerry fans. Bob, I don’t know you, I don’t know for sure whether you still play record albums, but there are some people who still swear by vinyl and they have not gone to CDs or heaven forbid, downloading music. If there is enough dedicated people who really really love their BlackBerry, BlackBerry can keep doing these devices for the foreseeable future.
CHCH: It is hanging on to the base and not growing it.
MR: Yeah, I don’t think this is really going to appeal, God bless again, sometimes we go retro to appeal to a hipster market. Some 22 year old with a beard says, ‘hey, I want to get that classic phone going.’ I don’t think that’s going to happen.
This is really for people of my generation, people who say ‘I don’t want Angry Birds and all of the screens. I don’t want to watch video, I don’t want to watch television. It is not a personal amusement device. I have a business function, but I need something that’s current, but still has those capabilities of the past.’ That’s what they are aiming for.
CHCH: They are hope there is a market for it. But speaking of marketing, there really isn’t that much savvy, still with BlackBerry. They really fall short in that area.
MR: Engineers who are selling products to other engineering types, that’s their big thing. I will note though that this company is rapidly focusing on its enterprise side. I don’t know whether you follow the story a week or so ago about one of the car manufacturers, I think Ford, announced they were getting out of Microsoft and adopting the BlackBerry operating system within their cars. This is a perfectly acceptable strategy.
I think BlackBerry is going to focus much more on an institutional market, offer some phones to the public or to the business market, but say ‘if you want the gismos and the gadgets and the high-tech stuff, OK Apple, you have the high ground and we will give it to you, but we will go to other places’ and this is a company that again a year ago, we thought wouldn’t survive. The stock is trading around $9, today it shot up 18 cents. Doesn’t sound like very much, but that’s a 2 per cent increase. There is still some life in this company left.
CHCH: Thank you so much, Marvin, for your analysis.
MR: My pleasure.
