Why BlackBerry India is not facing any depression

BlackBerry
BlackBerry India says future is exciting for the Canadian company despite significant drop in the number of resources and smartphone market share in the country.

Recently, BlackBerry India CEO Sunil Lalvani decided to move to chip major Qualcomm to head its India business.

BlackBerry says it is in the middle of a significant transition across the world. The IT industry does not know whether BlackBerry will discontinue its smartphones forever.

It admits that the company under the aegis of BlackBerry Chairman and CEO John Chen is transforming from a business primarily fuelled by the sale of smartphones, into the enterprise software provider focused on cross-platform mobile security and productivity.

Its engineers are building innovative telecom solutions. It announced an alliance with Hyderabad-based ValueLabs to boost its R&D.

“We are actively recruiting, in India and other countries, for people who can fuel our growth and enable us to expand our leadership in security, privacy and the Internet of Things,” said BlackBerry in a blog post.

BlackBerry India claims that things are fine with the smartphone maker. Business is happening in India. For instance, Indian business giant Essar has selected BES12 to manage its data, apps and devices. BES12 manages Essar Group devices that run Android, BlackBerry and iOS.

ES12 adoptees include Colombia’s insurer Caprecom, Canadian hospital chain Mackenzie Health. The enterprise mobility vendor has more customers as well.

Indian telecom service provider Idea Cellular some time ago launched Enhanced SIM-Based Licensing solution that enables customers to pay for their Enterprise Mobility Management Services in the same bill as their voice and data plan.

BlackBerry claims that it is building a business that will lead in helping its enterprise customers implement an end-to-end mobile security strategy. “India is very much a part of our plans today and in the future,” said the company in response to an article in a leading business daily in India.

BlackBerry is not inactive. There are several examples. It is acquiring AtHoc, a provider of secure, networked crisis communications. The AtHoc platform will integrate with BlackBerry’s enterprise portfolio to offer customers new capabilities. It has also acquired WatchDox, a provider of security document synchronization, sharing and management.

BlackBerry appointed Carl Wiese as president, Global Sales for advancing the company’s global sales efforts to drive growth. Wiese joins BlackBerry from Cisco.

Financial results are not supporting the growth story of BlackBerry that said software and technology licensing revenue rose 150 percent to $137 million for the three months ended May 30, 2015 over Q1 FY 2015. “I am pleased with the strong performance of our software and technology business. This is key to BlackBerry’s future growth,” said CEO John Chen.

BlackBerry generated $658 million revenue in the first quarter of fiscal 2016 — approximately 40 percent from hardware, 38 percent from services and 21 percent from software and technology licensing. BlackBerry had 2,600 enterprise customer wins in the quarter. Approximately 45 percent of the licenses associated with these deals are cross-platform.

During the first quarter, the company sold approximately 1.1 million BlackBerry smartphones with an ASP of $240.

Baburajan K
[email protected]

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