BlackBerry shifting emphasis from smartphones to services

TORONTO (REUTERS) - BlackBerry no longer owns the fast-paced, innovative smartphone world but the company, whose email-on-your-hip devices once revolutionised the industry, now aims to run it.

The change in focus was hard to miss at the company's well-attended annual conference in Florida last week, even as news of a new smartphone model and its plans to offer the popular BlackBerry Messaging (BBM) instant message service on other platforms grabbed the headlines.

The company, whose BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) offering has long allowed customers to manage BlackBerry devices within corporate or government networks, is now extending that feature to let customers manage non-BlackBerry devices. It is also providing security for data regardless of what devices the customers use.

"The most exciting announcement they made is their strategy to provide secure infrastructure across devices and secure iOS and Android devices in addition to BlackBerry devices," said Mr Yaacov Cohen, who heads Harmon.ie, a company that gives users access to corporate collaboration tools such as IBM Connections and Microsoft Office 365 across a range of operating systems.