Tuesday 30 April 2013

Blackberry's Thorsten Heins talks Tablets and the Q10! [Update: Blackberry aren't ruling out tablets!]


   Blackberry once upon a time were a behemoth. They were huge in business, popular with consumers and everyone loved BBM. If we fast forward to the present then it's not quite as rosy over at their HQ in Canada. It seems that the boys almost missed the boat when things changed to touch screen, leaving them with tonnes of qwerty devices which seemed a little outdated.

   If we fast forward to now, things are looking a little better. The company has released the Z10, which is not a bad smartphone at all, but it does have a lot of last years specifications at the price of this year's smartphones, which isn't a smart move. There's also the Playbook and the Q10 on sale now!

   The Playbook though is a few years old now and there were rumours that Blackberry were going to release a successor to the device, on the condition that it was profitable. After what we've heard today though it doesn't seem too likely that we will see a new tablet from Blackberry though. In an interview with Bloomberg Heins went on the record as saying:

 “In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore... Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model.”

   Instead, Heins wants to “see BlackBerry to be the absolute leader in mobile computing -- that’s what we’re aiming for,” with the plan being, “to gain as much market share as I can, but not by being a copycat.”

   With regard to the qwerty Blackberry Q10 Heins said that, "We have very, very good first signs already after the launch in the UK.” He then said that sales of the Q10 were building on an “installed base of more than 70 million BlackBerry users... We expect several tens of million of units.” That last statement is a little strange because that quantity of sales seems a little excessive given that the population of the UK is just below 70 million, but we suppose there are a lot of business users!

   If you're interested in the full interview then check it out on Bloomberg here. Take it with a pinch of salt though, it's quite likely that he's been misquoted!
Via Twitter.

[UPDATE]

It seems that the guys over at Slashgear received a statement from Blackberry which read:
“The comments that Thorsten made yesterday are in line with previous comments he has made about the future of mobile computing overall, and the possibilities that come with a platform like BlackBerry 10. We continue to evaluate our tablet strategy, but we are not making any shifts in that strategy in the short term. When we do have information about our PlayBook strategy, we will share it.”
So there's still the potential that we will see a tablet in the future, just Heins doesn't think one will arrive?


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