Blackberry CEO Thorsten Heins made a bold statement when he declared Apple’s iPhone to be outdated. The chief executive of Blackberry-maker Research In Motion Ltd. broke the news on Thursday, just a day before Blackberry was supposed to launch their most recent, but delayed touch-screen device in the United States. AT&T will begin to sell the devices on Friday, six weeks after the introduction of Z10 smartphone among the foreign markets.
Heins also stated that a newer version of the Blackberry device, which included an updated keyboard, might be delayed by two weeks until it is finally released in the US.
The introduction of both the touchscreen and the keyboard models by RIM is a sign of an attempted comeback after RIM lost its crown to the release of iPhone by Apple in 2007.
According to Heins, Apple has lost its novelty due to the fact that iPhone provides no multitasking capabilities and an outdated user interface compared to the latest Blackberry Z10 device.
“It’s still the same,” Heins said of the iPhone. “It is a sequential way to work and that’s not what people want today anymore. They want multitasking.”
Heins added that the Blackberry’s OS 10 allows users to multitask at will as the users do not have to shut down a running application just to check an e-mail.
“We’re changing it for the better because we’re allowing people to peak in the hub,” Heins said.
Heins said the iPhone was revolutionary five years ago, but he said it’s now “just kind of sitting there.”
With all this being said, RIM might be at a tough spot given the fact that their latest keyboard device, called the Q10, faces further delay while customers get diverted to tantalizing offers made by iPhone and a diversity of Google Inc.’s Android smartphones. Blackberry might have lost its reputation to its rivals along the years. ‘Physical Keyboards’ is the only reason behind Blackberry’s fan following as most users prefer QWERTY keyboards over touch screen keyboards.
According to Heins, delay behind the release of Q10, keyboard version of Blackberry, is due to the late production of the phone.
“It’s our job to deliver the right software package and the right software quality to the carriers,” he said. “Then it is on the carriers to decide how intense they want their testing cycle to be and that really can range from a few weeks to three months.”
According to reports, US carriers did not prioritize testing as RIM lost a huge market share along the years. Although the company performed remarkably well in the overseas market, US was the only market where it suffered. iPhone and Android are the two market giants while Blackberry plunged to a 2 percent market share in 2012.
Heins made it clear that he wanted Blackberry to regain their past glories within the US cellular markets.
“You got to win here to win everywhere else,” he said. “That’s just the way it is. We’ve lost market share quite a bit, to put it mildly, and we absolutely need BlackBerry 10 to turn us around.”
Heins said initial sales in other countries are encouraging, but he could not release numbers ahead of RIM’s earnings report next Thursday.
“I get more and more excited every day,” he said. “I really have to make sure I stay grounded and I don’t lose my sense for reality. But for the whole company this is so important to finally be here, and to see people buying it, after we were told 30 months ago when we started that two quarters down the road we would be bankrupt, we would be out of business.”
What are your thoughts on the Apple iPhone? Think each update is a rehash of the same of stuff?
