Tag: mobile technology

The new chief operations officer had formerly been an exec with Sybase and then at LiveOps.

BlackBerry has now announced that it has recruited a brand new COO, Marty Beard, who had previously been the CEO of the LiveOps cloud customer service company, after having worked as an executive for a stretch at Sybase.

Beard will now be responsible for several areas, including BB10 app development, customer care, and marketing.

The new COO is not the first veteran of Sybase to make his way to BlackBerry. Most notable among the recruitments of that nature was CEO John Chen, himself, who had been the chief executive officer at Sybase before he took the same position, as well as the chairman’s seat, at the Canadian handset manufacturer in November 2013.

BlackBerry has become quite the team of alumni from Sybase, including a number of the top spots in the company.

Mark Wilson, the senior vice president of marketing, also came to the company from Sybase. He had been the head of corporate and field marketing. Similarly, Eric Johnson is now Global Sales President after having left Sybase where he had worn several hats, such as senior vice president, general manager for North America, and general manager for financial services.

The previous COO at BlackBerry was Kristian Tear. Tear left the company only three weeks after Chen came aboard, as a result of a considerable shakeup of the organization’s management. At the same time that Tear left, Frank Boulben, the chief marketing officer, and Biran Bidulka, the chief financial officer also departed.

Many industry experts are now speculating that the similar backgrounds of the new recruits to the company will be quite handy for Chen as he works to change the aim of the business to place a greater focus on its enterprise customers. The next smartphone – the BlackBerry Passport – which has already been unveiled in its prototype form, has already been making technology news with its unique square 4.5 inch screen and its return to the much beloved QWERTY keyboard. This design is meant to make it easier to view documents such as spreadsheets, which could potentially be quite useful to their primary market.

A startup in California is coming ever closer to bringing printable zinc batteries to reality.

Imprint Energy, a Californian startup, has now managed to secure $6 million in funding in order to bring its paper thin, flexible batteries – which would be ideal for wearable technology – to the market for the first time.

This tech would make it possible for devices to become considerably smaller than they currently are.

At the moment, device manufacturers – particularly in the area of wearable technology – are limited as to how small they can make their gadgets while still allowing them to maintain a reasonable performance, because today’s batteries take up space, and are typically their largest components. Even the Li-Ion battery packs, which are not necessarily huge, still take up too much room when it comes to the wearables market. Should Imprint Energy be successful, that situation will rapidly change.

The opportunity that this type of printable ultra thin battery offers wearable technology manufacturers is nearly limitless.

The scientists at Imprint Energy decided to take aim at a rechargeable, printable zinc battery, instead of taking the traditional route of making incremental improvements to the battery technology that is already in existence.

This solid state technology, which has been nicknamed ZincPoly, can be printed in a number of different shapes and sizes, it is flexible, and is exceptionally thinner than anything else that is currently on the market. Moreover, these high density cells have a lifetime that is about the same as Li-Ion and can outperform today’s conventional batteries, as well.

To continue along the list of advantages that are offered by using Zinc is that – unlike its current counterparts – it is non-toxic. It is also appealing in that it comes with a low price tag when it comes to the cost of its development, as it is a highly abundant and available material. It is a durable material, as batteries made out of it will continue to function regardless of whether they have been punctured or compressed.

By the writing of this article, Imprint Energy had not released a time by which it expects that this tech will find its way to market shelves. However, the company has confirmed that it will be using the funds to speed up the development stage while securing design wins within the Internet of Things and wearable technology market spaces.