Hoping for a comeback, embattled Canadian company BlackBerry Ltd has launched a new smartphone.
Chief executive John Chen (程守宗) on Wednesday unveiled a phone with a square screen called the “Passport” to a Toronto audience.
BlackBerry has increasingly lost relevance as a smartphone company in the years since the 2007 launch of Apple Inc’s touchscreen iPhone and the 2008 introduction of Google-powered Android phones.
Chen, who took over as CEO last fall after a failed attempt to sell the once-iconic company, said the new phone was in the works before he joined BlackBerry and joked that he can only take credit for not killing it.
“The reason we are here is to really try to get the Canadian people to rally behind us,” Chen said.
The Passport is the size of a passport and has a square screen that measures 4.5 inches. It has a touch screen and a physical keyboard, something traditional BlackBerry business users prefer.
Chen said the Passport will be available in the US via AT&T Inc on an exclusive basis by the end of the year. It is also available for US$599 for a limited time through Amazon.com Inc.
However, BGC analyst Colin Gillis said the Passport is not critical to BlackBerry’s survival, because the company does not need to sell many to make money on them. Gillis said while the square shape is odd, past attempts to compete with Apple and Android with similar looking devices failed.
Shares of BlackBerry rose 12 cents to US$10.69 in afternoon trading on the NASDAQ.
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