At the recent Mobile World Congress, the Chief Executive of Blackberry, John S. Chen announced that the company will be featuring a new smartphone that will be made available to consumers later this year. Among the distinguishing features of the phone are its curvy shape complemented with a slider keyboard. Also, the phone will have a 25-hour battery life and powered by the Android operating system.
His announcement came amid declining sales worldwide for the Blackberry brand, once regarded as the leading mobile device in the world market. Even President Barrack Obama had once boasted during his campaign for Presidency back in 2008 that he could not part away with his beloved Blackberry and was completely infatuated with it. During the congress, Mr Chen also said that the company will be shifting its business focus from a pure mobile device maker to to a company that can power business services on a variety of devices.
In addition to the Leap, BlackBerry said it would introduce another phone this year that features a keyboard, as well as a followup to the high-end Porsche edition BlackBerry, which it released last year. Analysts said that even as the company moved toward becoming more of a services company, it was still important for them to release new phones, as reported by New York Times.
