One of the top executives of the Canadian company BlackBerry Ltd. has left the corporation in what it seems like a total transformation. Jim Mackey, BlackBerry’s head of corporate development and strategy, left the company this February according to a declaration he gave to Reuters this Thursday.
Neither he or the company explained the reasons for his departure until this day. When he entered the company in 2013, the executives presented the incorporation through an official press release, but this time the silence has been permanent on this issue. In fact, the Chief Operating Officer, Marty Bears, refused to make any comments on the matter in an interview he gave this week.
Since his entrance in the company, Mackey collaborated directly with BlackBerry Ltd. CEO John Chen, as they oriented their efforts to the integration in the corporation of a body of important acquisitions and the signing of several significant partnerships contracts.
Is BlackBerry a mobile phone company?
Analyzing the last movements from the corporation, the answer to that question seems to be “no.” One of the major announcements given by the tech company was in 2015 when they definitely spurred down their original operation system and started working with Alphabet Inc’s Android.
Late last year, the Canadian company also signed a body of contracts regarding license, security, and productivity issues, and now there are as much as three big firms that are producing BlackBerry devices. Currently, there are four BlackBerry devices on the market that are functioning with the newest Android operative systems.
“The next part of it is the channel,” Beard said in an interview with Reuters this Thursday. “You can’t do it only direct, you need partners that fill in the gaps. The biggest issue we have is not getting invited to the table because the customer doesn’t know that BlackBerry is doing that. That’s the challenge.”
A couple of years ago, BlackBerry acquired WatchDox, which is a data synchronization company, and AtHoc, which is an emergency communications company. They also bought their former rival, Good Technology Corp, for $425 million. These mentioned businesses have been added to a portfolio that is clearly in constant expansion, and that is oriented to the enhancing of the software technologic field.
According to Alex Thurber, head of BlackBerry’s mobility solutions unit, the licensing ventures that BlackBerry currently has could translate into a big step forward regarding the company’s goals.
“You’re going to see a lot more BlackBerries going forward than you have in a long time,” Thurber says.
He added that many other firms would be working alongside with BlackBerry, focusing on the release of new smartphones and the expansion of software-related services.
BlackBerry lost their market opportunities in the mobile phone field several years ago, after Apple and Android-based manufacturers started to monopolize the system. However, the new objectives of the company may portray a better future for the promising Canadian company, as time will show if a transformation is what the company needed.
Source: Reuters