Whether BlackBerry can make a comeback and grab a piece of the healthcare market, particularly with so many other tech giants also moving in, is likely to take a while to determine. But CEO John Chen sure is trying.
On the heels of his new Passport phone, Chen is offering the BlackBerry Classic. That’s right: Classic, as in physical keyboard across the bottom, screen above that.
BlackBerry offers a glimpse of the form factor on its website. And that picture speaks more words than Chen in his blog post announcing the Classic.
Other than waxing nostalgic for BlackBerry devices of old and telling readers the company intends to share more details in the weeks ahead, Chen laid down no delivery timeline, no telecom partners and, of course, no price points.
Here’s what we do know:
“We’ve made quite a few enhancements around the edges and on the inside. The screen is bigger and sharper. Our application catalogue is growing,” Chen wrote. “The BlackBerry 10 operating system incorporates all the best productivity and collaboration features on any mobile device, including the BlackBerry Hub and our all-new BlackBerry Blend.”
The fact that BlackBerry 10 was released in January 2013 might be a hint that the company is looking to unveil the Classic sooner rather than later, marking Chen’s applauded urgency to turn the company around.
Part of that strategy involves targeting healthcare — even as competitors Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung are also closing in on the industry. Although the battle is nascent, some experts are saying that Blackberry’s history of stronger security may give it an edge among hospital CIOs, much the way it has in certain financial niches.
In addition to new phones, including the Passport, the company has made bold moves to advance supercomputing in healthcare, improve interoperability via a specialty OS, offer a patient engagement app in its BlackBerry World and ratchet up its voice and text security roster with an acquisition.
