The dwindling smartphone manufacturer will still hold onto its Waterloo headquarters.
BlackBerry Ltd. is once again making technology news, but this time it has to do with selling off the majority of its Canadian real estate as opposed to releasing a new mobile device somewhere in the world.
There is a great deal of vacant land being sold off in a new deal reached by the company.
According to the latest technology news update from BlackBerry at the time of the writing of this article, it had landed a deal that would sell off over 3 million square feet of space and vacant lands. The entire purpose is to help the company to be able to raise a significant amount of capital.
This technology news could put cash back into the hands in the money bleeding smartphone manufacturer.
Once the company has sold off the space, it will lease some of it back again, said BlackBerry on Friday. According to the company in a release that announced this deal, this strategy to sell off the land “is part of BlackBerry’s ongoing program to improve operational efficiencies, optimize resource usage and shift resources.”
The intentions for this deal had first been announced by BlackBerry in January, and it is now expending that the deal will close by the first quarter of fiscal 2015. This decision comes on the heels of massive cutbacks by the company. At last tally, there were more than 4,600 jobs slashed away as the manufacturer of mobile devices tries to claw its way back up through the billions of dollars lost throughout 2013.
The executive chair and CEO of BlackBerry, John Chen explained that by successfully selling this Canadian property, it will “help us move toward our goal of continued operational efficiency.” In his technology news statement, he went on to add that the company is maintaining its commitment to holding a strong presence within Canada, and its global headquarters will remain, as ever, in the city of Waterloo. That location is not a part of the deal that is selling off the land belonging to the company.
The launch event brought back the highly beloved feature to the struggling manufacturer’s handsets.
BlackBerry Ltd. has now unveiled its next smartphone offerings and these mobile devices are making exciting technology news headlines with the long awaited (and hoped for) return of the key-based keyboard built into handsets.
The lack of touch screen keyboard had always been a draw before the brand’s massive decline.
Also revealed in this technology news from BlackBerry was a lower cost smartphone that will make its way to market shelves in April. Its own server software for organizations will also be experiencing an important and flashy update, to try to enhance the experience that it provides while the company fights for it life to become relevant once more.
The BlackBerry technology news will be impacting consumers from various regions around the world.
For example, the inexpensive version of the smartphone, the Z3, will make its way into the Indonesian market first, followed by other Asian markets. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to those who have followed BlackBerry’s movements, as this has been what was predicted for the handset maker. The company has revealed that these mobile devices will sell for under $200, without subsidies.
After that point, it will expand the sale of the device to other southeast Asian markets, which is a region of the world in which the company has been able to keep hold of a notable market share, despite the massive competition with other mobile devices.
For the North American market – particularly in the United States – BlackBerry has become nearly nonexistent, with iOS and Android establishing themselves as the primary leaders in that space. The hope now is that the Q20 smartphone will greatly outperform last year’s release of the Q10. This new version of the device is what the CEO of the company, John Chen, has called “Classic” in its design. This refers primarily to the restoration of a keyboard based on keys, instead of a touchscreen.
BlackBerry responded to the technology news that its consumers enjoyed the keys on their devices and didn’t want to lose them. Now, they’re being brought back to appeal to those consumers, once more.
