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John Chen Interview with Kevin Michaluk, Marcus Adolfsson

] Crackberry editor in chief Kevin Michaluk and Mobile Nations writer Marcus Adolfsson sat down with the new Blackberry CEO at lunch to discuss the companies plans going forward.

Some of them are not well monetized or well invested. Some of them are not well known. I thought it's important that the investor market knows exactly what BlackBerry actually brings to the market”,

Chen said. “That's a tall order. The market has slid very quickly in the last 12 months.” He added that “the good news is that I have talked to enough customers, and they do believe in our security advantage, and they do like to see us win. There's a lot of goodwill out there still. But we have our work cut out for us on that.”

] Chen plans to use BlackBerry’s multi-platform device management solutions to win back enterprise customers.

But to do that BlackBerry first needs to decouple the brand from being thought of as mainly BlackBerry handsets.

] "BlackBerry is about security, about productivity, and about communications.

Chen explained. “You could be an Android customer, and also a BlackBerry customer. It's not mutually exclusive. I think that's an important key message of the company going forward.”

] BES needs to continue to evolve to meet the needs of the modern enterprise,

] and he wants grow the server solution into a “enterprise mobility computing engine.”
] “BES actually today makes money. It's just not growing,” Chen said. “In fact, as BB7 got retired, it's going the other way.
] I need to add the features and functionality to go back the right track,” he added.

] “Almost all the enterprises in the world today are dealing with mobility in one form or another. Most of them are doing this somewhat piecemeal, somewhat sporadic.

] For example: They would develop mobile applications for one platform, then they provision them on a different platform, and then manage it on a third one, and they analyze on a fourth one — and they shouldn't have to do that themselves. There is a need for a very good integrated solution.”
] “This is going to be the next BES — so call it BES, 11, 12, 13, 14. But we’ve got to get into how enterprises manage mobile applications — ] develop, ] provision, ] identify, ] authentication, and so on down — and press a lot more on security.”

] To sell BES solutions, Chen plans to build up an enterprise sales force focusing on vertical industries.

] I could put a sales team on Wall Street. I know how to do this up and down Wall Street … we will go in and tell them why BES is the best thing for them, and go through the road map, the offerings, and all that good stuff. We're going to protect their investment in iPhone, and Android, and everywhere else, even with Windows Phones.”

] Chen also told us that a cloud-based BES solution will soon be available - the BES10 Cloud.

] Current BES implementations require companies to host and manage dedicated servers, which requires upfront and ongoing investments. By moving BES to the cloud, implementations can be rolled out faster and server management becomes BlackBerry’s responsibility. Several CrackBerry members reported last month that they had been invited to a “Market Preview of BES10 Cloud”, and so far seem impressed by the service.

[ on BBM] very happy with the recent multi-platform launch of BBM messenger.

] “That was the first time that we de-coupled the brand from the BlackBerry handset, and as you can see, the results are very exciting. You've got 45 million BlackBerry users, you got 40 million Android/iOS users, so 85 million users for social messaging. It's getting up there.”
] BBM is not currently producing revenue, Chen sees it is a long term-investment. “When we monetize it will do very well. Right now it's not, we're losing money on BBM. But it's an investment state. This is why a portfolio approach is important, because if you just purely look at, - Oh, I've got to make money on everything I do - then BBM needs to stop. But if you stop BBM, I think that's very shortsighted. I think that's ridiculous. That's my opinion.”

[ on DEVICES] “I am never going to give up designing phones. I may not build it, but I'm going to design it. I think it's a very important thing.”

] “The future phone is going to be cool and is going to be high-end. For the low-end phones, I'm going to work with my partners to build and maybe, in some cases, design. But they are all going to be BB10. They are all going to be our brand.”

] because that's the biggest piece. That's what I am number one focused on. You can't really make a profitable company and lose money on phones.”
] trying to limit the losses is to partner with Foxconn, making them an non-exclusive manufacturing partner for BlackBerry’s emerging market phones.
] “they have the volume purchase power that I would never come close to getting, for the typical common parts that the industry uses, probably 75 percent of our phone. We can make it a lot lower cost, same price, same standard, and I think that's just a win-win for everyone.”
] “I love to partner with a lot of people to go after a lot of different markets.” He added “Foxconn can't go everywhere, because they're not a sales engine, but they do have relationships in a lot of places, Indonesia being one, China being one, India, Vietnam, and Malaysia, and a number of African countries.”
] hired Ron Louks to lead the handset division. Ron has been in the mobile space for a long time, including as Sony Ericsson's CTO and as HTC’s Chief Strategy Officer. With Louks appointment, Chen feels he now has “good phone people with good phone experience” on his management team.
“I truly believe the phone is like the movie business, you are one hit away from being great again”

] QNX is a market leader in the competitive automotive industry — a lot of design wins, a lot of model cars, getting royalty, high-margin, but has been kept reasonably small.
] I think that the whole vision of machine-to-machine mobile computing is going to be the future.
] I think there are a lot of verticals that need QNX, and there are a lot of devices needing QNX outside of phones.”
] “It's going to be a huge industry, and we have 40 OEM wins, so we're well on our way to being the number one leader. Everybody recognizes that.”
] “QNX makes money. We're not making enough. But three years out, who knows? You get enough design wins, this thing is going to go far up. By the way, when it comes to royalty, it's pure margin.”