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Heins interview
Do you think that RIM now has THE product around which the turnaround story can be scripted?
It’s not only about having a product but having the right platform to grow the company profitably. That’s why we took the hard way. Everybody advised me to embrace Android . I don’t know how many emails I get saying ‘why don’t you put BlackBerry services on Android?’ I am so happy I didn’t .
At what stage are we today in RIM’s turnaround?
We still have significant regions of growth, like the Asia-Pacific and Latin America. We are leaders in South Africa. So turnaround, I would mostly say, is in North America, which moved very quickly to 4G LTE.
So what’s the plan?
The industry will move from mobile communication, where we are today, to mobile computing. This is not your mobile phone anymore (holding his phone), this is your mobile computing device.
Think about this from an enterprise perspective. I have my device on my hip, no desktop, no laptop and services are being played down from the cloud. The future is mobile computing; smart phones and tablets are just elements of it. The industry is on the verge of a whole new paradigm. It’s fascinating and energizing. That’s a decision we took 18 months ago to build a new platform. Our new BlackBerry 10 devices will not have a smartphone platform but a mobile computing platform. That’s why we chose the hard way, build Blackberry ground-up . We wanted to innovate for the next 10 years.
How will RIM benefit from the inflection you were talking about?
I think the inflection point is really very obvious. Today, what are you going to do with these new devices? Everybody is using browsing and all these elements on it. The power that these devices have…think about this in the context of BlackBerry…across platforms device management. Take it to the next level. Think about cross platform mobile computing end point management. Think about machine to machine. Think about connected cars. Every time they need to communicate with each other, I can manage those end points. That’s the first step.
Second, I have the only global secure network connecting 630 carriers worldwide, securely and reliably. So all the data traffic that these mobile computing end points, and that could be smartphones, would have to exchange could run on BlackBerry network. Third, after-services . I run specific BlackBerry services and applications . Fourth, I can build my own hardware if I choose so. So I’m not in one segment only. I offer the full solution from management to transport to security to device. I think the challenge will be to find the focus and not do everything. While others are struggling to find what next, we know what where we want to go. We will continue to play in smartphone category but will lead in innovation in the mobile computing space. That’s our future and that’s where I am taking the company.
Apple, Samsung, HTC, and to some extent, Nokia, have been hogging the limelight with streams of new smartphones . But you’ve postponed your launch by a quarter. Don’t you think it would be the case of missing the bus in the hyper-competitive handset category?
What is my option? If I throw in a premature product, what do you think will happen to my company? We will get beaten up because....... Others are riding the horse on an open platform and they have to figure out how to differentiate. It’s going to be tough. I have my own platform, my own patents. I can differentiate myself.
Read the interview in its entirety,
https://rapidberry.net/thorsten-heins-blackberry-10-main-priority-will-shift-focus-to-mobile-computing-later/