John Chen, interim CEO of BlackBerry, has issued an open letter saying that the company is "well-positioned for the future" and pins hopes on its enterprise and messaging service. "The journey has just begun," he said.
The Canadian smartphone company is going through difficult times and appointed John Chen as the interim CEO of the company in November this year. Just after his appointment as CEO, Chen took the opportunity to issue an open letter announcing BlackBerry's plans for the future.
And before the year drew to a close, Chen has done it yet again and has issued another open letter slamming critics and promising investors that the company will bounce back.
On Friday, December 20, BlackBerry announced its financial results for the quarter ended November 30, posting a loss of $4.4 billion. However, Chen confirmed that some of its businesses are still doing well.
"While our Enterprise Services, Messaging and QNX Embedded businesses are already well-positioned to compete in their markets, the most immediate challenge for the Company is how to transition the Devices operations to a more profitable business model," said Chen.
In the latest memo penned to CNBC, Chen has also taken the opportunity to boast about the company's enterprise service when compared to its rivals.
"When it comes to enterprise, we're still the leader. Don't be fooled by the competition's rhetoric claiming to be more secure or having more experience than BlackBerry. With a global enterprise customer base exceeding 80,000, we have three times the number of customers compared to Good, AirWatch and MobileIron combined. This makes BlackBerry the leader in mobile-device management," Chen wrote.
"Many in the regulated industries-those with the most stringent security needs-still depend solely on BlackBerry to secure their mobile infrastructure. For governments, BlackBerry cannot just be replaced-we are the only MDM provider to obtain "Authority to Operate" on U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) networks. This means the DoD is allowed to use only BlackBerry. Across the globe, seven out of seven of the G7 governments are also BlackBerry customers," he wrote.
BlackBerry has already launched its BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) on iOS and Android, which has also seen strong demand as the company registered 40 million new iOS and Android users in just 60 days.
"Our popular messaging service, BBM, is also renowned in regulated industries for being the most secure mobile-messaging service, and consumers love it, too," Chen wrote. "We will continue to invest in this popular service and build out its features and channels, with plans to turn it into a revenue stream in the coming years."
Chen also said that its QNX commercial operating system is also well poised for the future. "QNX has always been one of our most exciting technologies and it is poised for further growth. Already the dominant machine-to-machine technology of the automotive industry, new capabilities and cloud services are being unveiled at CES in January, and we're looking toward adjacent verticals for expansion," he wrote.
BlackBerry has been hit hard by competition in the smartphone space, prompting the company to team up with Foxconn to manufacture its future handsets. It will be interesting to see if BlackBerry is able to turn the tides in its favor in the coming years.
