“Today was a good day” A summary of what to expect from BlackBerry for the rest of this year

Ice Cube

Yesterday was a big day for BlackBerry, not only did the company post some pretty sweet financial results in which sent the stocks as high as 14%, John Chen and his team laid out some pretty cool information for fans and bloggers to be excited for. You can pretty much (for now) expect news coming from the company each month (apart from August and October) until the end of this year, including devices, events and services. 

Needless to say, it may be too early to celebrate all the way to the Bank, but yesterday’s news meant that BlackBerry is due on course to finally becoming a fully profitable company on all accounts. The stocks soared as high as 14% and that is carrying on today, as I type, the stock is 6.5% up.

Anyway, whilst John Chen as his team reported the Q1 BlackBerry financial results, he also answered questions and told the crowd and listeners what BlackBerry is planning on doing for the rest of this year. Below, you’ll read some interesting things that they have in the pipeline:

  • July –BBM for Windows Phone release and Security Summit Event (in New York, venue not confirmed yet)
  • September – “Devices Portfolio” Event (as John Chen described), BlackBerry will be unveiling the BlackBerry Passport along with the launch of 10.3. This will be happening in London, UK. Although the name of the event has me thinking maybe John Chen will be officially announcing the BlackBerry Classic then? Along to go with all that, BBM Meeting is apparently making an appearance then too.
  • November – BlackBerry Classic launch and BES 12
  • December – QNX Cloud.

As part of the eBBM suite, John Chen also mentioned something called “BBM Meetings” during the Shareholders meeting. On the slideshow, the description for BBM Meetings was:

BBM Meetings empowers employees to be more collaborative and productive anytime, anywhere from their mobile device. 

So, other than August and October, BlackBerry pretty much have something going for them for the rest of the year. Keeping in mind though, the above timeframe can very much change as the days go on – John Chen jokingly (or was he?) said the BlackBerry Classic could come before November but reiterated that the device would definitely be out by November. With 2 devices to come this year and with 2 more apparently planned (yet no mention of them), this year for BlackBerry might not be so bad after all.

John Chen at the Shareholders Annual Meeting talked about a bunch of things including showing off the two upcoming devices:

On the Z3

  • He expects low-priced Z3 model will sell “better than a million phones” in its lifetime in 9 countries. (2nd country being Vietnam 2 days ago and expected to be released in India next week!)
  • BlackBerry Z3 is a 3G model and Chen says the company hasn’t decided if they will create a 4G model.

On BBM and its revenue

  • He expects the BBM business to make $100 million in revenue in its next fiscal year.
  • The company will contract BBM ad sales to an external advertisement placement company.
  • Product adds to enterprise suites, voice, and “collaborations,” and mobile payments.

On the BlackBerry Passport

  • The device will be manufactured by Vistron, not part of the Foxconn deal.

On Hiring and Layoffs

“We really are at the tail end of it, we’re down to a handful at this point. Every time I say it’s done, somebody in my organisation shows me that it’s not.”

On the Bold 9900 relaunch

  • The media misunderstood why the 9900 was relaunched. Says it was a “calculated hold-on strategy”
  • He says “My customers … cannot wait if their product breaks. They need to have a replacement.”
Credit to David Friend @dj_friend on Twitter for being at the shareholders summit and providing the quotes above and information.

If you didn’t know by now,

“Everything BlackBerry does is for security” – John Chen, CEO of BlackBerry