The struggling handset maker has now announced three new high-end smartphones.
Although the Q4 quarterly earnings results were not all that promising for the Canadian handset maker, it has followed up that recent news with an announcement of the upcoming re-release of the BlackBerry Bold 9900, which was one of the last BB7 smartphones that originally had its debut back in 2011.
This announcement has been confirmed by the CEO of the company, John Chen.
Chen released the technology news about the BlackBerry Bold 9900 at the same time that he revealed that of the 3.4 million smartphones that the company sold in Q4, 2.3 million of them had been BB7 mobile devices. He has shown that he has every intention of keeping the company on track with what they have shown to be their most effective as he continues the slow rebuild of the hardware division back up again, with a goal of profitability.
Beyond the BlackBerry Bold 9900, there will be three high end smartphones to be released.
These devices will be hitting the shelves over the next year and a half and will be quite familiar in their look and feel as BlackBerry mobile devices. The first is the “Classic” BlackBerry Q20. Little is known about the two devices that will follow except that they will bring back the QWERTY keyboard that was so beloved by those who are faithful to the brand and was greatly missed when it was removed from later models of the devices.
Before Chen came to the company, the previous leaders had spent the last three years being determined to complete a tremendous platform transition from BB7 to BB10 and to jump out of the old RIM (Research In Motion) brand and into the BlackBerry that represented the future.
When it comes to Chen and his vision for the company and the BlackBerry Bold 9900, he doesn’t seem to care very much about transitioning from the old platform to the newer one – or perhaps he has not been granted the luxury of caring. He is more focused on going with what works and using what he can to keep the company afloat, even if that means using existing successes instead of trying to push the newer products.
The April 1 date pretty much gives it away, not even rims would make that mistake.