Research In Motion will launch six new handsets this year on its new operating system BlackBerry 10.
The Blackberry maker had previously announced only two new handsets were to be launched on January 30th, the date its Blackberry 10 (BB10) OS is due to be released.
The last handset Blackberry released was the Curve 9320 in May 2012, according to Mobile News, and the new handsets plus a swish new operating system could signal the end of the Blackberry manufacturer’s less than ideal performance last year, including management re-shuffles when chief executives and chairmen Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis were replaced by Thorsten Heins, network outages, reported net losses and delays in the release of BB10. And then there was that embarrassing incident on the plane at the end of 2011…
The company’s most recent financial results for the third fiscal quarter in the three months ending December 2012 showed revenue was down 5% from the previous quarter and a whopping 47% from the same quarter of fiscal 2012, at $US2.7 billion (£1.7 billion)
Chief marketing officer Frank Boulben made the announcement regarding the new handsets yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and said they would be priced to appeal to the low, medium and high end of the market, according to Mobile News, which could challenge Apple’s prospective lower priced iPhone, rumoured to be due at the end of 2013.
The announcement follows further good news for RIM from the major UK telcos who showed their support for the projected Blackberry 10 devices, confirming they intended to supply handsets at launch, with EE saying they will run on its 4G network.
The networks confirmed they had been testing BB10, with Mr Heins saying in December that 150 carriers were completing technical acceptance programs for the first BB10 products
The news also follows efforts from Research In Motion (RIM) to spur on app development for its new OS, a lack which has been felt for some time by users and which, looking at the success of Apple and Google in this area, seems to be somewhat of a no-brainer.
