No BlackBerry Live in 2014
Apparently, part of the struggling mobile phone maker's survival plan includes calling off its annual conference.
- Carrie has lived on both coasts and can definitively say that Chesapeake Bay blue crabs are the best.
Perhaps not surprisingly, BlackBerry has decided to forgo its big conference next year.
The struggling handset maker will not host a BlackBerry Live conference in 2014, the company announced in a blog post Friday. Instead, it will hold smaller events throughout next year that will focus on the "specific business, developer, and partner audiences."
BlackBerry has held the annual event, which was first introduced as the Wireless Enterprise Symposium, since 2002. At last year's event, BlackBerry unveiled the low-end
The end of BlackBerry Live is just the latest bit of bad news from the company. BlackBerry announced worse-than-expected third-quarter losses of $4.4 billion last week. The company managed to sell only 1.9 million smartphones last quarter, an ugly decline from the 3.7 million sold in the previous quarter.
Despite the doom and gloom surrounding the company, newly appointed CEO John Chen says he has a plan to keep BlackBerry alive.
"It's important to understand that BlackBerry has an enormous amount of assets," Chen said during the company's third-quarter conference call on Friday. "We have committed, devoted people who want to do the right thing for the company and customers. The market has spoken, and we have have listened."