'People wanted me to change our name' - BlackBerry CEO on its dramatic switch from hardware to software

John Chen opens up on BlackBerry's turnaround as the vendor continues its shift from hardware to software

BlackBerry CEO John Chen was urged to change the vendor's name as it moved from its heritage hardware model to focus solely on software, he revealed today at an event in London.

BlackBerry has been going through a period of transition over the last four years as it divorced its hardware heritage, culminating in an announcement last year that it would cease making its own devices and focus on software and security.

Speaking at BlackBerry's fourth security conference in London - the first the vendor has held outside the US - Chen said that this shift in strategy has started to gain traction in the market.

" A year ago everyone wanted to talk about the next keyboard phones," he said. "They wanted to talk about the phones, the speed, the web browsing capability and all these sorts of things which was great - we're very proud of our heritage.

"We continue to license it to other people who want to build phones, but we really need to get out of the phone business and leave the hardware business, and move onto the software side of the equation.

"The narrative has changed. For BlackBerry to get back on a positive track… it's very important for [these people] to start talking about the value-add that we provide. I love talking about our heritage, but that only goes so far."

BlackBerry now focuses predominantly on software and provides solutions around security, communications and device management.

The vendor's name will still appear on handsets through licensing deals with hardware firms.

The BlackBerry Motion will ship in the UK early next month and is manufactured by Chinese giant TCL. Chen said he expects the vendor's hardware revenue to be completely erased next year, with income coming only in the form of royalties paid for its branding.

The move away from hardware, he added, led people to question why he didn't change the company's name to better reflect the shift in focus.

"Virtually all the analysts, rightfully so, had written things that were negative," he said. "But after three and a half years we really have turned around the perception and the understanding of our company.

"Our strategy, the execution and our value-add to the industry of being the number one, leading cybersecurity software company is now being recognised.

"People have by the way asked me to change name, from BlackBerry to something else," he said. "People have asked me to do more advertising [as well], but the thing is our consistency, and our team going out there day after day and getting our message out there, is starting to pay off."

More partners

The move away from hardware to software has led to a shift in BlackBerry's go-to-market, with more channel partners needed to deploy the solutions to end users.

The firm has seen its new partner intake rise 75 per cent this year compared with 2016.

Chen said that BlackBerry has built out its direct sales teams for highly regulated markets such as financial and government, but that other verticals are served predominately by partners.

"As we go on to pivot from being a hardware and handset company into a software, security and IoT company, one of the major shifts is how we get to the market," he said.

"We pick a very highly selected group of verticals… and we built our go-to-market strategy around that with a direct sales force and partnering.

"In the other parts of the market beyond these verticals, which we call highly regulated, we decided to go with partners and this is why things are going very well. We have to expand our channel partnerships and we've been really focused on that."

Chen also hinted that BlackBerry could turn to acquisitions to help boost its go-to-market and presence in the channel.

He said that BlackBerry is actively looking to ultilise the $2.5bn (£1.9bn) cash it has in the bank, saying the two primary areas of focus will be around enhancing the security offering and channel strategy.

"One of the areas is in how we enhance security even more," he said. "We've spoken about machine learning, pattern recognition, artificial intelligence - these are all things we are working on… it would be helpful for us to boost that.

"We will continue to maintain that we have the technology, the know-how and the products [but] we need more channels, so anywhere that could help us there, that's a possibility."

Check back on ChannelWeb over the next few days to see an in-depth article on BlackBerry's channel strategy with channel boss Richard McLeod