BlackBerry banks on topnotch tech in sustaining market lead

CEBU, Philippines - Amid the tough competition in the smartphone market in the Philippines, BlackBerry is up to sustain its leadership in the country, leveraging on its topnotch technology that is solely designed to enhance the communication experience of its users.

“We have the best proposition in terms of messaging,” said BlackBerry director for Singapore, Philippines & emerging markets, John Leung.

Leung expressed confidence that despite the competition in the smartphone category, BlackBerry will remain its leadership specifically in the Philippines, because of the brand’s proven efficiency and quality.

The pioneering brand that introduced the “Qwerty” phone trend in the country, BlackBerry is up to make aggressive move in terms of educating Filipinos on the “power of BlackBerry.”

He said Philippines is one of the countries’ in Asia that the brand is focusing on, because of the huge potential for growth, with over 90 million population, and the fact that it is considered as the world’s texting capital.

According to Leung aside from educating the market on the phone’s powerful features, the brand is also closely working with the major telecom firms in order to offer attractive packages for consumers to take advantage of the BlackBerry technology.

Part of the plan, he said is to offer BlackBerry packages in both post and pre-paid segments, including the offering of daily, weekly and monthly BlackBerry plans.

In this way, the brand will not only be popular to the affluent and high-end market, but also now reachable to the mainstream consumers.

The company will also strengthen the creation of BBM (BlackBerry Messaging) community in the Philippines that will join the already 40 million BBM users in the world, which is the largest mobile social network.

Globally, there are now over 50 million BlackBerry users, Leung said.

In the Philippines, the brand is targeting to grow in significant number, as the interest of the market for Smartphone has greatly improved.

Based on a survey conducted by GFK Custom Research in the Philippines, for the month of April and May this year, BlackBerry came out as the number selling smartphone in the Philippines.

Despite the entry of more smartphone brands in the Philippines, Leung expressed confidence that BlackBerry will remain a leader in this category, because of the brand’s proven efficiency and unique messaging technology.

Used to be an expensive smartphone brand, with expensive feature packages, BlackBerry is now moving on to provide affordable phone units, with affordable plans in post and pre-paid market, in partnership with telecom operators here.

Lowest BlackBerry unit is now pegged in the P10,000 pricing level, which is competitive to other smartphone brands. Likewise, with the affordable BlackBerry plans now being offered by telecom firms, such as the latest P999 BlackBerry plan of Sun Cellular, Lueng hopes that more Filipinos are going to enjoy the BlackBerry technology.

In the Philippines, there are now at least 1.3 million users of smartphone-plus. Leung said this number is expected to grow in the next few months, as mobile browsing is now on the necessities of social-savvy Filipinos.

Social networking, such as Facebook, Twitter, among others are included already in the features of new BlackBerry units. These units are also seen to hit the Philippine market considering that the Philippines is also named as 7th largest Facebook user in the world, with over 26 million Filipinos maintaining Facebook accounts.—(FREEMAN)