Over on CNBC, BlackBerry Limited's new CEO, John Chen, provides an open letter to the public, outlining a path of success he plans to take with the company. This road to recovery will rely on four ingredients: enterprise services, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), the QNX Embedded business and the Devices business.
"It's been easy for competitors to promote negative stories about BlackBerry, focusing on the business of the past. But I'm not focused on who BlackBerry used to be—I'm focused on what BlackBerry will be today and in the future," Chen writes.
"Today, our company is strong financially, technologically savvy and is well-positioned for the future. In less than two months, my team and I have engineered a new strategy to stabilize the company, return to our core strength in enterprise and security, and maximize efficiencies," he adds.
He said that when it comes to mobile Enterprise, BlackBerry remains the clear leader. The company still has over 80,000 enterprise customers, which is three times the number of customers compared to the combined numbers of three of BlackBerry's biggest competitors.
"Many in the regulated industries—those with the most stringent security needs—still depend solely on BlackBerry to secure their mobile infrastructure," Chen writes. "For governments, BlackBerry cannot just be replaced—we are the only MDM provider to obtain "Authority to Operate" on U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) networks. This means the DoD is allowed to use only BlackBerry. Across the globe, seven out of seven of the G7 governments are also BlackBerry customers."
Chen also boasts about the success of BlackBerry Messenger, which just landed on Android and iOS. Corporations love it because it's highly secure; consumers just love it, period. In just 60 days, the chat client has reeled in more than 40 million new users. BlackBerry will continue to invest in this platform, and expects to make money in a couple of years.
"QNX has always been one of our most exciting technologies and it is poised for further growth. Already the dominant machine-to-machine technology of the automotive industry, new capabilities and cloud services are being unveiled at CES in January, and we're looking toward adjacent verticals for expansion," Chen writes.
Finally, he talks about Devices, echoing previous reports that BlackBerry teamed up with Foxconn to produce smartphones in Indonesia and other fast growing markets. The Foxconn deal is expected to boost BlackBerry's time-to-market, allowing the company to design and ship phones faster. The hardware team is also focusing on high-quality products at competitive prices.
To read the entire letter, head here.
