For BlackBerry 2013 has turned out to be one of the worst years in history with quarterly losses in tune of over $900 million and just $1.6 billion revenue. While announcing BlackBerry 10 earlier this year, the company had revealed that it won’t launch BB10 powered devices in quick succession, but would rather stick to six prosumer devices for the current fiscal.
Earlier the company again confirmed to multiple media companies that BlackBerry will be launching a total of 6 BB10 devices, but recent report on Pocket-Lint claims that this isn’t going to be true and BlackBerry will stick to just four devices – Z30 being the last.
Pressure on BlackBerry is at its highest this year and particularly this quarter considering the fact the despite the Fairfax buyout bid the company’s stock prices are constantly falling. The $950 million in losses has forced the company to axe nearly 40 percent of its workforce – 4,500 jobs to be precise.
Fairfax CEO Prem Watsa stressed that BlackBerry is quite strong in enterprise products and that it should progress ahead in that segment of the market. If the Fairfax led consortium manages to ink the buyout deal we strongly believe that consumer products may be the last thing on the new management’s agenda.
However, BlackBerry might not have immediate of plans of pulling out of all consumer market as BlackBerry’s UK senior retail director, Johnathan Young, told CNET that the company has a huge presence in consumer segment in the country. The recent corporate inclination of shifting attention towards enterprise products doesn’t change anything as far as UK is concerned.
“The majority of our business, particularly in the UK is consumer, and we will continue to support that”, said Young. BlackBerry has also confirmed that BB smartphones will remain on sale in the UK.
The same is true for some of the other countries like India, Indonesia, and other south-east Asian markets. Pulling out of these markets would increase BlackBerry’s losses even further.
