BlackBerry denies plans to quit consumer market

BlackBerry has no plans to quit the consumer market, despite being on the ropes and on the block thanks to weak device sales.

A spokesperson for BlackBerry categorically denied to iTnews at the BlackBerry Jam developer conference in Hong Kong that it is considering to pull out of the retail market.

"Absolutely not. People that buy BlackBerry still shop online and in retail outlets in markets such as the US where BYOD is becoming more prevalent by the day," the spokesperson said.

"They also receive corporate provisioned smartphones. We plan to make BlackBerry 10 available to these users across all traditional retail channels such as in-store, online and through enterprises," the spokesperson added.

BlackBerry VP for developer relations Alec Saunders demos a wireless heart rate app.

Photo credit: Juha Saarinen

The Canadian company will roll out an update to the BlackBerry 10 operating system, version 10.2, in October this year.

Instant visual notifications, priority inbox for the BlackBerry Hub and improvements in overall system performance are some of the new features in 10.2 which is installed on the recently launched Z30 smartphone.

BlackBerry now claims over 130,000 apps in its BlackBerry World store for BB10 seven months after launch. It is looking to improve this figure with easier porting of Android apps, said Blackberry vice-president of developer relations, Alec Saunders.

The company also intends to drive the deployment of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server 10, which can manage Google Android and Apple iOS devices as well, with Windows 8 support coming up in the next version.

An enterprise data library for BlackBerry 10 has also been made available. This lets developers build apps that can connect to SAP and Oracle corporate platforms, the company said.

Juha Saarinen travelled to BlackBerry Jam Asia 2013 courtesy of BlackBerry.