BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY), despite another poor earnings report and some weak sales of its handsets, is still standing and fighting and is continuing to push out more devices. We all know by now that the touchscreen-only Z10 just has not worked in the iPhone world, and there was hope with the Z10 and Q5 handsets with the trademark BlackBerry QWERTY keyboards, but those have actually been slow to roll out – the Q devices aren’t even fully rolled out in the U.S. yet. But with another poor quarterly report in the books and officially losing market share to Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Phone in the smartphone market, BlackBerry seems to be moving into irrelevancy pretty quick. (Then again, maybe not.)
But even as BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) should reassess itself, BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins reportedly had a positive meeting with shareholders last month that seemed to at least calm some fears – though many on the outside seem to believe that Heins might be just trying to buy himself more time as CEO.
Undoubtedly, he asked for some patience while the company tries to move into being a services company more than a hardware device company, though the company even seems to be losing some of its enterprise clout – as demonstrated by a recent report that the FBI has chosen the Samsung Galaxy over the BlackBerry as an approved smartphone device due to its security measures. It’s hard to say for sure, but that snub could very well be indicative of the troubles BlackBerry is having in the marketplace, whether enterprise or consumer.
Nonetheless, BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) seems determined to continue with its calendar and to be nearing the launch of its latest device, called the BlackBerry A10. Rumors have been spreading, but now it seems that some of the rumors and speculation can be settled because of the latest leaks, which include some photos and apparently a 3-minute YouTube video as well, as reported by our friends at Know Your Mobile. It appears that the BlackBerry A10 may be a direct competitor to the samsung Galaxy S4 in that the A10 will match the S4 with a 5-inch display, which will be AMOLED on the BlackBerry device.
At least in the leaked photos, the A10 may not be pre-installed with the BlackBerry 10.2 OS update – which was due out anytime – but BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) has apparently loaded the device otherwise with 2 gigabytes of RAM and a dual-core processor. What about a release date?
The device is expected to hit store shelves sometime in November and may be intended for mobile gamers – thought that may be speculative. What do you think? Would you be interested in a touchscreen BlackBerry this time around after the release of the Z10 by BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) earlier this year? Are you a fan of larger touchscreens, or touchscreens in general? And would you still be an investor like fund manager Jim Simons (see his full equity portfolio) despite the earnings and sales failures over the last few months in this attempted comeback? Give us your thoughts in the comments section below.
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