BlackBerry makes a comeback, keeps its stand in the market

BlackBerry, the pioneer of QWERTY keyboard in India has managed to survive the competitive and ever evolving smartphone market in 2014 with its biggest launch, the BlackBerry Passport.

With few high-end smartphone models being launched this year, BlackBerry Passport stood a good chance, though it might still not be comparable to the iPhone 6.

BlackBerry also introduced the BlackBerry Assistant and Amazon App on its BlackBerry Passport handset.

Highlights of BlackBerry Assistant are as follows:

• The BlackBerry Assistant intelligently determines how to respond to you based on how you interact with it. If you type, it responds silently, if you speak, it speaks back
• BlackBerry Assistant can be triggered without handling the BlackBerry Passport from any vehicle that has ever been made which supports Bluetooth Hands-free and phonebook transfer.
• Users of BlackBerry Passports have a direct access to more than 200,000 Android apps in the Amazon Appstore.

BlackBerry also organised an online internship programme, which saw more than 1500 student applicants, of which 80 selected interns were trained on application development. 

Annie Mathew, Director, Business Development, BlackBerry, also stated that interns developed 40 applications which were uploaded to BlackBerry World and have received a good number of downloads and associated revenue. The tech giant also launched several other projects that have been listed below: 

• Along with the Kerala Developer Group, BlackBerry  initiated an ongoing internship program called BlackBerry STEP (Student Technical Enhancement Programme). The programme aimed at enhancing technical skills of students so that they are able to develop and publish high quality BlackBerry 10 applications.
• Frequently host initiatives like Hackathons, BlackBerry 10 Jam, Developer Group Meetups, BASE (BlackBerry Apps by Student Entrepreneurs) and Hangout Internship Programmes
• The BlackBerry Enterprise Partner Program aimed on creating an enterprise ecosystem. The program is open to all types of organizations who are interested in creating several enterprise apps and solutions.

The company also introduced the BlackBerry Classic device, which features a 3.5-inch display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. The device runs on BlackBerry 10.3.1 operating system and is powered by a Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon chipset with a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. However, The BlackBerry Classic will arrive in the Indian market in 2015.

Read: Detailed specifications of BlackBerry Classic

Recent reports also state that a new patent form by BlackBerry reveals a new hybrid device. The new design could be called Victoria or Visa and could be expected early in Q2 of 2015.