BlackBerry’s CEO John Chen has been on the job for about a month and has brought a heartbeat back to the Waterloo-based business. He’s already written a couple of open letters about BlackBerry’s stability and direction. Chen previously noted, “We’re going back to our heritage and roots – delivering enterprise-grade, end-to-end mobile solutions. As we refocus back to our roots, BlackBerry will target four areas: handsets, EMM solutions, cross-platform messaging, and embedded systems.”
Chen took a different path for his third letter today. In an open editorial on CNBC, Chen targeted the investment community, declaring “The journey has just begun.” Although the company lost $4.4 billion last quarter, Chen and his new leadership team are focused on supporting the core enterprise customer, including high-level government bodies, who want unrivalled security. “When it comes to enterprise, we’re still the leader,” said Chen. “Don’t be fooled by the competition’s rhetoric claiming to be more secure or having more experience than BlackBerry.”
BlackBerry has over 79 million customers and over 80 million on BBM. Chen echoed similar words as former CEO Thorsten Heins, stating, “It’s been easy for competitors to promote negative stories about BlackBerry, focusing on the business of the past. But I’m not focused on who BlackBerry used to be — I’m focused on what BlackBerry will be today and in the future.”
With shedding thousands of employees, shifting most of the manufacturing to Foxconn, BlackBerry “has a clear lane ahead of us to create new trails as a nimbler, more agile competitor.”
