Ailing BlackBerry has published an open letter to customers advocating that they can still “continue to count” on the Canadian manufacturer.
The letter, which appears on 30 newspapers in nine countries, tries to allay fears about the company’s short term future and states that BlackBerry has “substantial cash on hand” and a “balance sheet that is debt free”.
The recent stories about BlackBerry have been less than encouraging. The news that the company was to be acquired by Fairfax Financial was dealt a blow following reports casting doubt on the deal, with sources claiming the company’s co-founders were interested in buying back the company.
Similarly, the manufacturer last month announced the loss of 4,500 jobs – or two fifths of its global workforce.
Of course, plenty of news sources and analysts have been queuing up to take pot shots at the embattled tech giant. Analyst house Gartner controversially published a member-only report last month, entitled “BlackBerry Announcements Require Enterprises To Take Action”, which advocated that customers should move to other technologies.
The letter references this. “Speaking of those dramatic headlines, it’s important that we set the record straight on a few things,” it noted.
So what message does BlackBerry want to project? The company claims it is best in class for productivity tools, security, enterprise mobility management (EMM), and mobile social networks.
The statistics don’t exactly leap out in the letter, but they are there. The number of users on the BB10 Enterprise Service server base grew from 19,000 to 25,000 in the last quarter. There are “around” six million users who wish to be notified about the rollout of BBM for Android and iPhone.
Overall, the message is one of loyalty. “You trust your BlackBerry to deliver your most important messages, so trust us when we deliver one of our own: You can continue to count on us,” the letter concluded.
The full BlackBerry letter can be seen here. It’s certainly an interesting step the company has taken; but will it pay off?
