Tag: blackberry

The Canadian mobile handset maker is lowering the price tag associated with some of its key devices.

According to recently published reports, BlackBerry smartphones are starting to see some notably lower price tags associated with their purchase, including: BlackBerry Classic, BlackBerry Passport, BlackBerry Z30, and BlackBerry Q5.

The company announced the prices on the official store site, this week, and are effective immediately.

Among the Blackberry smartphones that are raising eyebrows in terms of their newly reduced prices are the Classic and the Passport. This is particularly true because these were released with a great deal of fanfare, only last year. The Passport features a 13 megapixel camera and a uniquely square shaped touch screen. The Classic, on the other hand, has an 8 megapixel camera and a considerable 22 hours of battery life.

The Passport BlackBerry smartphone price has been reduced by a hefty $50, bringing it to $549 from $599.

The $50 reduction in price is also available on the Classic, which is now being sold for $399 instead of $449. The $50 appears to be the standard savings that has been applied to all of the devices that have been included in this price reduction. That said, the Q5 will now be sold for an even better price as it has been given an ultra affordable price of $149 instead of its typical price of $249. Similarly, the Z30 is now going for only $229 when it used to be $349.

Those are the prices that have been listed on the U.S. BlackBerry website, but it appears as though the reduction in cost is being applied to the devices around the world. For example, in the United Kingdom, the Passport used to be priced at £559 but now they are being sold for £529 and the Classic, which used to be £319 is now £349.

The reduction in the price of the BlackBerry smartphones occurred following a Morgan Stanley report that indicated that there has a reduction in the sales of the company’s mobile devices. It has been working to increase their sales, particularly among their premium devices. Enhancing affordability appears to be the latest step in the company’s strategy.

John Chen is feeling a good deal better about the company’s prospects regardless of slumping sales.

Outspoken BlackBerry CEO, John Chen, has spent his time at the helm of the company showing that he is not afraid to do things differently in order to allow the Canadian handset maker the opportunity to claw its way back into relevance and profitability and now, despite its slumping sales, it looks as though things have, indeed, been turning to a positive direction.

It now looks as though this has been only a time of sowing seeds that he now feels will spike mobile device sales.

That said, the latest sales results that BlackBerry has revealed have shown that there is still a long way to go before the company can truly feel that it is out of the woods. Indeed, it seems as though the direction that the company has taken is toward a positive turnaround, but at the same time, the efforts remain at the ground level. The genuine growth has yet to kick in. These latest announcements have caused the company’s stock to take a rollercoaster’s path, as analysts struggled to process the true meaning of the good and bad earning news.

There were a number of very important points that were revealed in the recent BlackBerry announcements.

While the sales from the company’s fourth quarter had plummeted by 32 percent when compared to the same quarter the year before, reaching only $660 million (even managing to miss the lowest estimates of $783.1 million for that quarter), there were areas in which the company still did very well. For instance, it sold massive sale of patents and took in a tax recovery of $29 million which boosted the company into an adjusted profit position. In fact, its profit was a boost of $0.04 per share. This represented the second consecutive quarter in which it managed to beat its bottom line after having undergone six painful quarterly losses in a row.

Chen was very positive and spoke to shareholders and analysts during his BlackBerry earnings call, saying that after the company had struggled to the point of nearly drowning, its “financial house is in order”. He also pointed out that the changes that he has made since he took the head position of the company have now started to bear fruit.