In a bold statement for an organization that’s still on rather shakey ground, BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said in an interview on the Milken Institute conference in LA that he doesn’t see a future for tablets.
“In five years I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore. Maybe a tremendous screen for your workspace, but not a tablet as such,” he said. “Tablets themselves aren’t a fine business model.
In a separate interview with Bloomberg TV, asked about BlackBerry’s future tablet plans, Heins outlined his concerns in regards to the market but said there are announcements on that way, adding his vision that a BlackBerry smartphone can be all anyone needs. “The tablet market is awfully challenging from a pure hardware perspective; only a few companies earn money at the hardware.”
“If we wish to do it, we’d like a service value proposition on top of that. A few of a good way to be shown at Blackberry Live but we’re running with an exceptionally different idea that makes this [the Q10] and only this your individual mobile computing power.” He said there’ll be more ‘exciting announcements’ to come back this year.
Will Hollywood go BackBerry
The CEO said he was happy with initial sales of the BlackBerry Q10 within the UK, which became the fastest selling tech product ever for its exclusive launch partner, Selfridges. Feedback from early adopters centred on people’s love for the Qwerty keyboard. “We will turn Hollywood BlackBerry again,” Heins claimed was feedback from a star trialling the device. It’s now available with lots of the major operators within the UK and the CEO said he expects the Q10 to sells 10s of millions of units worldwide.
Heins again refuted claims from Boston-based wealth management firm Detwiler and Fenton that the sooner released, and Qwerty-less, Z10 is seeing increasingly more returns. He said the device was doing better than earlier BlackBerry models and is in-line with industry figures on device returns.
Asked if he believed this was a gross misrepresentation or wilful manipulation by short sellers, he said: “Whatever the motive is… you might want to use the proper facts.” The case is with US regulators.