BlackBerry Cancels ‘Live’ Conference, Pulls Two Unreleased Smartphones

Smartphone maker BlackBerry has cancelled its BlackBerry Live conference for 2014, following the cancellation of the developer-oriented BlackBerry Jam show in November.

The move comes on the heels of the struggling company’s decision to quietly cancel two unreleased smartphones that had been planned for the coming year. BlackBerry also withdrew the most recent release of Twitter from its app store due to reported issues with the software, advising users to downgrade to an earlier version.

Shift to smaller events

BlackBerry Live, which launched in 2002 as the Wireless Enterprise Symposium, will be cancelled in favour of smaller events aimed at particular groups, according to the company.

“We will not be hosting a BlackBerry Live conference in 2014,” BlackBerry said in a blog post. “Instead, we’re planning to continue with an engaging lineup of smaller, targeted events taking place all around the world over the next 12 months. These events are designed with a greater focus on the specific business, developer, and partner audiences, and will allow you to get the most out of your attendance.”

The company also decided to cancel two as-yet-unreleased smartphones, in order to “mitigate the identified inventory risk”, according to an earnings-related filing for the third quarter of its fiscal 2014. BlackBerry’s declared loss of $4.4bn (£2.7bn) for that quarter was due in part to the write-off of nearly $1bn in unsold phone inventory in the fiscal second quarter and another $1.6bn in the third quarter.

Along with its earnings announcement, new chief executive John Chen (pictured) said the company would begin outsourcing the production of all low-cost handsets to Foxconn, which also makes Apple’s iPhone. The cancelled handsets, named code-named Café and Kopi, were low-cost devices intended for emerging markets, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal citing unnamed sources; it is therefore possible that, aside from inventory issues, the devices did not fit with BlackBerry’s Foxconn partnership strategy.

Jakarta

BlackBerry’s Chen has said he wants Foxconn to eventually take over the manufacturing of all of the company’s devices, including high-end smartphones. The first Foxconn-manufactured handset, code-named Jakarta, will be launched around April, according to Chen.

As for the Twitter software problem, users had reported loading issues and crashes with Twitter 10.2.2, according to reports on smartphone websites. Acknowledging it was “actively investigating” the “user-reported issues”, BlackBerry advised affected users to downgrade to version 10.2.1, providing step-by-step instructions on how to do so.

BlackBerry’s revenues fell to $1.2 billion from the $1.6 billion it posted in the second quarter, while sales of smartphones slumped from 3.7 million to 1.9 million. The ongoing failure of the BlackBerry 10 operating system to revive the company’s fortunes can be best demonstrated by the fact that most of the handsets it sold were running the ageing BlackBerry 7 platform – BB7 outselling BB10 by three to one in the latest quarter.

Around half of the company’s revenue was generated from services, with hardware accounting for just 40 percent and software and other income adding up to seven percent. Chief executive Chen said the results might look bad, but asserted the company has established a “clear roadmap” that will allow it to improve in the coming year.

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