BlackBerry’s CEO to stick to 3-stage transformation plan

The CEO of BlackBerry Inc. Thorsten Heins told shareholders on Tuesday that the smartphone company is still in the early days of its “transformation” and blamed the stock’s recent fall on expectations from Wall Street that were too high.

BlackBerry CEO explained in details what the next phase consists of. The three-stage plan to “transform” the company into a competitive force aims to push back the company in the smartphone market that it once ruled. He pointed out that changes are yet to be made and that the company only completed the first stage of this plan over the last year, with launching the BlackBerry 10 operating system and restructuring the business and workforce.

The second phase was defined by the Chief Executive as “build and invest in the future”. This will involve efforts on building the company’s enterprise services and BlackBerry Messenger platforms, as well as launching new BB10 devices.

“Our transformation is ongoing, and it is in no way easy,” Heins said, cited by MarketWatch, adding that the current fiscal period will be a “year of investment” for BlackBerry. The CEO told shareholders its difficult to predict the share price of BlackBerry in near future as the competitiveness in the market ruled by Apple and Samsung is strong.

He also added that mobile wireless carriers are fighting for every sale and its difficult to persuade them to move to a potentially rising product and make them leave the huge amount of sale for future value. “It’s hard to convince them to not to go to where the puck is, but where the puck is going to be,” Heins said, noting his effort to expand BlackBerry from beyond mobile communications into mobile computing. “There’s some short-term thinking there,” he said, cited by MarketWatch. “I really value the relationship we have with our carrier partners.” the CEO added.