It was but a matter of time. BlackBerry, which is struggling to survive in the highly competitive smartphone market, said it will not host any BlackBerry Live conference in 2014.
BlackBerry Live's origin can be traced back to 2002 when it debuted as the Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES). Since then the enterprise-centric industry event has come a long way in covering all aspects of BlackBerry, in the similar vein WWDC and the I/O cover all aspects of Apple and Google. However, it seems the company doesn't find this annual event relevant anymore.
"Instead, we're planning to continue with an engaging lineup of smaller, targeted events taking place all around the world over the next 12 months. These events are designed with a greater focus on the specific business, developer, and partner audiences, and will allow you to get the most out of your attendance," a blog post read.
The announcement's disappointing, no doubt, at least to BlackBerry fans, but it clearly reveals the direction the company is heading under its new CEO John Chen.
Last week, BlackBerry said it has teamed up with the world's largest contract manufacturer Foxconn to design and develop budget BlackBerry devices for selling in emerging markets such as Indonsia and Mexico. It suggests that the company wants to focus less on the hardware business and more on the software side.
"While our enterprise services, messaging and QNX embedded businesses are already well-positioned ... the most immediate challenge for the company is how to transition the devices operations to a more profitable business model," Chen said.
"We have a clean balance sheet, we're strong in cash, we're no longer worried about whether we're going to be around [in the future]. We have some areas to beef up ... but we've taken away the biggest chokehold of the last few years and we're ready to fight back," the chief executive said on the company's earnings call on Friday.
In other words, hardware isn't the main focus of Chen while security and enterprise solutions, for which BlackBerry is popular, are.
Shares of BlackBerry climbed 3.46 percent to close up at $7.47 on the NASDAQ.
