BlackBerry hopes for a comeback with global launch of square-shaped Passport smartphone

BlackBerry Chief Executive John Chen holds up the unreleased Blackberry Passport device. Mark Blinch / Reuters

BlackBerry made another attempt at a comeback yesterday with the launch of its new handset, the Passport.

The Canadian manufacturer unveiled the square-shaped smartphone in a simultaneous global launch event in Dubai, Toronto and London.

The phone, priced at US$599, has a 4.5-inch square screen and 60 characters on the full qwerty keyboard, compared to the traditional 40 characters.

“How do you disrupt the market and create something fundamentally unique and be more productive?” asked Mark Wilson, the senior vice president for global marketing at BlackBerry. “We saw there was a significant vacuum in this.”

BlackBerry's market share across the Middle East and Africa dropped dramatically from 12 per cent last year to just 2 per cent at the beginning of this year, according to figures from International Data Corporation (IDC). It has been struggling to compete against Apple and Samsung and now has less market share than the Chinese players Lenovo and Huawei. Globally, its market share in the second quarter of this year dropped to 0.5 per cent. It had 13.6 per cent share of the global smartphone market back in 2011.

The Middle East has traditionally been a strong market for the company, with the popularity of BlackBerry Messenger and cheaper monthly call plans favouring sales of its handsets. But the company has been unable to relive its dominance of the smartphone market in recent years. The launch of its renewed operating system back in 2012, BlackBerry 10, failed to lure back the customers that had migrated over to other brands.

BlackBerry is set to report fiscal second quarter results on Friday and within a couple of months it is also expected to launch the long-awaited BlackBerry Classic, which bears similarities to its once wildly popular Bold smartphone.

The company is hoping the Classic and the launch of its new mobile device management system – BlackBerry Enterprise Services 12 (BES 12) – will help it claw back ground ceded to rivals in both the hardware and services market. The BES 12 platform will allow IT managers at large firms and government agencies to mange and secure not only BlackBerry devices, but also all Android, iOs and Windows-based devices on one platform.

The company has started to shift its focus to its core strengths – mobile data security and device management. The launch event in Dubai focused on the company’s enterprise offerings.

The Passport, which carries the same dimensions as an actual passport, is intended to help users increase productivity.

“They’ve been creative in the way they’ve tried to play with it, but the big problem is it doesn’t fit into any pocket,” said Ashish Panjabi, the chief operating officer at Jacky’s Electronics. “If you’re looking at it as a messaging and communications device, it works well, as a sort of a mobile office-type product.”

It remains to be seen whether this device will persuade consumers in the region to go back to BlackBerry.

BlackBerry is the only mainstream handset manufacturer still producing smartphones with keyboards,” said Daniel Gleeson, senior analyst at IHS Technology. “This gives BlackBerry the opportunity to to exploit a niche in the market. It is focusing its efforts on enterprise and professionals. This is an acknowledgement of BlackBerry’s weakening consumer brand and substantially smaller marketing budget, but also plays to BlackBerry’s strengths in the enterprise sector when many It managers are loath to move away from BlackBerry.”

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