Blackberry Outsourcing Handset Business

Blackberry, once one of the largest mobile handset device companies in the world has failed to keep up with the worlds current smartphone devices. Blackberry began as a major player in the mobile phone and handset device world since its early come up with its first handset device in 1999. Its device revolutionized the world and became extremely popular in the business world. At its peak the Canadian company was valued at 83 billion dollars, and now ten years later that value has fallen to 4.1 billion dollars. The Chief Executive John Chen was forced into a corner where he would be required to change the companies business strategy before it took a complete pitfall. Through his experience and responses from the companies largest investors and shareholders, Mr. Chen has decided to stop producing one of the companies first major successes, its mobile devices, and concentrate the companies efforts into producing software. This decision came to light after it was shown that Blackberry only made up 1% of the total global smartphone population. It was completely thrown in the dark by the more successful and popular smart phone producers such as Apple inc. and Samsung electronics Co. Chief Executive John Chen stated that by completely pushing all the companies efforts into new software development he would be able to turn the company around and bring in more profit.
The article states that the software that will now be the companies major play in the technological world will be marketed to businesses and the government. The software will be presented as a mobile management tool that will allow these organizations to manage devices from various providers that are used by employees on corporate networks. This would be the companies new target market and targeting mix.
The Article puts great importance in how Mr. Chen's decision into changing the companies products and marketing strategy will be able to push the once more successful company into a new beginning and increase the companies revenue. It also states that this would be one of the only chances the company has coming out of its slump due to all the pressure that the company and John Chen are experiencing. The major investors have supported the idea thus far but have stated that if this fails it seems that many of them will be backing out and the company will reach its end.