At its news conference
here, the company also teased — in the briefest of fashions — that a
curved phone with a slider keyboard might be “coming later this year.”
BlackBerry dual curve slider teased. Only on show for 5 seconds. “Coming later this year…”
As for the Leap,
BlackBerry said it would go the distance for business users, with a
25-hour battery life, although it is no flagship device. The Leap will
retail for $275 when it goes on sale in Europe in April. There is no
word on whether it will be sold in the United States.
Its specifications are
appropriately middle of the road: a high but not extremely
high-definition screen, an eight megapixel rear-facing camera and a two
megapixel front-facing camera, acceptable processor and memory specs,
and a slightly heavy weight compared with some of the competition.
John S. Chen, the
BlackBerry chief executive, focused much of his presentation on
BlackBerry’s shift from a pure device maker to a company that can power
business services on a variety of devices.
BlackBerries now run
Android apps, and Mr. Chen emphasized a relationship with Samsung and
its Knox division, which has created a business-oriented environment
that can hold work-related apps and keep them separate from other data
on a device.
In addition to the
Leap, BlackBerry said it would introduce another phone this year that
features a keyboard, as well as a followup to the high-end Porsche edition BlackBerry, which it released last year.
Analysts said that
even as the company moved toward becoming more of a services company, it
was still valuable to release new phones.
“Devices still
represent a very significant revenue stream,” said Ben Wood, a mobile
and wireless industry analyst with CCS Insight. “They can’t afford to
slow down on their device portfolio releases. And to have a proper
portfolio of devices, you have to have a touch screen.”
From nytimes
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