Blackberry Hopes to Reinvent Itself with New Slider Phone

BlackBerry

BlackBerry seeks to make lots of changes in itself as a company. They have plans to move away from becoming just a smartphone manufacturer, and start providing business services to their customers instead. These services include assisting companies in managing a variety of mobile devices. BlackBerry has already made announcements in regards with their new venture, and it has done it again during the recently-concluded Mobile World Congress. Their goal is to bring more apps to BlackBerry phones, as well as offer services to both Samsung and Apple smartphones. They also want to build partnerships with Samsung.

BlackBerry’s president of devices and emerging solutions, Ron Louks, has also given hints about an upcoming new smartphone that has a curved display, similar to Samsung’s newly released Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge.

The new BlackBerry phone will also come with a slide-out keyboard. And since the device has yet to be given a name, BlackBerry’s CEO, John Chen, has given it the name ‘The Slider’. The company also has plans to release a second Porsche BlackBerry, as well as a keyboard smartphone.

BlackBerry’s sales took a downward slide when the smartphone started gaining popularity. Their phones gained a huge following amongst businessmen and CEOs, with their Qwerty keyboards being used to compose quick emails and messages.

But one of the downsides was the keyboard almost taking up half of the phone’s face, which limited the screen’s size.

Nowadays, as people start to get used to web surfing, playing online games and streaming videos on their phones, the public now prefers larger phone screens over smaller ones. This placed BlackBerry in a difficult situation.

BlackBerry Slider

This resulted in the creation of ‘The Slider’, which merges a giant touch screen together with a keyboard.

The phone’s keyboard can be locked when you’re not using it, or popped out if you want to compose a message or send formal emails.

This is actually not the first time that BlackBerry has released their own line of smartphones – In 2010, they launched the Torch smartphone line, which also featured a slide-out keyboard. If their Slider phone catches the public’s attention resulting in high sales, then BlackBerry has a huge chance to stop fading into obscurity. But if sales are low, then the company could suffer the same fate as their slider phones.

BlackBerry Z3

But even though they want to start providing lucrative software and services to consumers, BlackBerry still receives most of its revenue from smartphones. They unveiled four new gadgets last year – The BlackBerry Z3, a Porsche edition BlackBerry, the BlackBerry Passport, and BlackBerry Classic.