Blackberry belies “For Sale” reports

CEBU, Philippines - Citing the company’s positive momentum in its application platform for its users, Blackberry remains adamant amid worldwide speculations that the Ontario-based smartphone company is reportedly running a “fast auction process” to sell itself off almost two months from now and is now allegedly geared towards end-to-end solutions for enterprise-class entities, thus worrying the consumer market.

BlackBerry recently had the BlackBerry Jam Asia Conference in Hong Kong last September 26 to 27. One of the activities highlighted during the event was the demonstration of how BlackBerry 10 could extend onto a desktop environment, showing how applications could be projected from a BlackBerry 10 device onto a computer running Windows or Mac OS.

Blackberry expressed in the company’s latest statement sent to the local media its strong dedication to provide the best mobility experience for its customers.

“Our focus is unchanged and remains on scaling the BlackBerry 10 platform, driving deployment of BlackBerry Enterprise Server 10, launching multi-platform BlackBerry Messenger and delivering our secure and reliable global data network,” it stated.

It further cited that within seven months, the number of apps in BlackBerry World reached 256,668 of which 131,708 of these applications are for BlackBerry 10.

It also compared itself to its competitors, noting that Apple had a total of 17, 500 applications in their store seven months after launching the iPhone while the Android store had a total of 2, 908 applications.

Some of the built-for-Blackberry applications cited include Photo Studio Pro, Room Tunes,Evernote, The Perfect Year,BeMaps 10 Pro, and Hong Kong City Guide.

About 37 percent of the applications found in the BlackBerry World were developed in Asia Pacific.

“Since the launch of BlackBerry 10 devices in Asia Pacific, the number of downloads per user are more than two times higher on BlackBerry 10 compared to BlackBerry OS devices.The percentage of paid downloads on BlackBerry 10 is more than five times higher while BlackBerry 10 users generate more than seven times more revenue per download than those on BlackBerry OS,” it stated.

The gaming category was found to be the largest in terms of number of applications available and overall number of downloads in the BlackBerry World which is then followed by the lifestyle and recreation category.   (FREEMAN)