Thorsten Heins, the CEO and President of Blackberry, on Tuesday acknowledged that the businesses new line of smartphones, which originally were promoted by Heins as something that would revive the brand, had a U.S. release that was flawed.
However, Heins, who was speaking at the annual meeting of the company, told his investors, that Blackberry just needed additional time to complete a turnaround and asked for more patience from them.
Not everyone in attendance agreed, one shareholder referring to the new phones told Heins that he sensed that the rollout of the two new smartphones was just a disaster.
After over two years of being in development, the new smartphones and the new Blackberry 10 operating system were projected to give the smartphone capabilities similar to phones made by Samsung and Apple, the two dominating forces in the mobile handset market.
However, hopes that the smartphones would increase the company’s market share across the U.S. have vanished. At present only 0.9% of the market share is Blackberry’s in the U.S.
Late in June, Blackberry announced it had shipped more than 2.7 million new smartphones, about one million less than what Wall Street analysts had projected. That upsetting news sent the Blackberry stock plummeting and eliminated any possibility that a turnaround celebration would be held at the annual meeting.
Along with the shipment numbers that released in late June, the company also announced a quarterly loss of $84 million.
