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携手三星能否助黑莓复苏?

携手三星能否助黑莓复苏?

Michal Lev-Ram 2014年11月20日
黑莓公司刚刚与三星签署移动安全产品互售协议,还推出升级版黑莓企业服务器,其进军企业市场的雄心由此可见一斑。《财富》就此采访了黑莓CEO程守宗。

    程守宗入主深陷困境的黑莓(BlackBerry)已经一年了。自从执掌CEO大权以来,他努力试图让黑莓重新回归“根基”,并且开展了一些他觉得必要的创新与合作——总之,他要让企业用户重新正视黑莓的存在。

    本着这一目的,程守宗上周末在旧金山登台宣布了几项重大事务,包括与三星电子集团(Samsung Electronics)刚刚签署的一项合作。根据这项协议,三星和黑莓均将开售对方的移动安全产品。(一个可信的迹象是,程守宗还当众开起玩笑称,他妻子现在仍然在用一款三星Galaxy手机。)另外黑莓还推出了升级版黑莓企业服务器(BlackBerry Enterprise),从而使用户可以更加便捷地管理黑莓产品以及其他厂家的设备。

    在程守宗的领导下,黑莓的亏损有所改善,但并没有彻底止血,而且仍然有不少隐忧笼罩着公司的长期前景。在他去旧金山之前,《财富》(Fortune)对程守宗进行了专访,听他畅谈自己的商业战略——以及名媛金•卡戴珊。

    《财富》:“回到黑莓的根基”在今天对你来说意味着什么?

    程守宗:从总体上说,“回到黑莓的根基”指的远远不只是硬件设备。Classic手机是一个重要的部分,但并不是唯一的部分。(这部即将推出的设备将重新搭载黑莓经典的触控板。)我在刚来黑莓的时候就谈过重返企业市场,它指的不仅是设备,还包括那些将我们的软件和服务器作为运营中枢的企业。当黑莓业绩良好的时候,几乎大家都在用黑莓企业服务器。后来我们失去了发展重心,随之也失去了很多吸引力和用户。但我重新推出Classic手机的原因在于,大量用户想要它。

    从“回到根基”的角度,你怎样看待黑莓的创新?目前它扮演了怎样的角色?

    我们研发团队的指导方针是,大家都要专注以下四大支柱:安全性、隐私性、效率和协作。我们同时关注这几点。比如我们刚刚在BBM【即黑莓通讯(BlackBerry Messenger)】上推出了定时消息功能,也有人叫它“阅后即焚”功能。我们允许人们收回发出的信息,而不是简单地撤销。整个设计中心非常关注安全性、隐私性、效率和协作。我们并不打算在所有层面都要竞争一下。

    重新赢得开发者的信赖是“回到黑莓根基”的另一个方面,你怎样看黑莓开发者生态系统的现状?

    目前黑莓平台只有Facebook等少数应用是我们构建的原生应用。我们正在依靠与亚马逊(Amazon)的关系获得其它应用。亚马逊应用商店里的所有应用都可以在BB10(黑莓最新操作系统)上直接运行。这样我们就解放了企业开发者社区,让他们专注于开发者平台。自从我来黑莓后,我们的“寻根”路只走了6到9个月。我们有一些很吸引人的东西,但还有很多工作要做。

    It’s been about one year since John Chen, CEO of BlackBerry, took the top job at the struggling phonemaker. Since then, he has embarked on a campaign to bring the company back to its roots and spark new innovations and partnerships where he feels necessary—in short, to make BlackBerry relevant to business users again.

    To that end, this week in San Francisco Chen took the stage to make a number of announcements, including a recently-inked agreement with smartphone maker Samsung Electronics. According to the deal, both companies will sell each other’s mobile security products. (A true sign of the times: Chen joked with the audience about the fact his wife still uses a Samsung Galaxy phone.) The company also announced an updated BlackBerry Enterprise server, which will allow customers to more easily manage BlackBerries and devices made by other manufacturers.

    Under Chen’s direction, BlackBerry’s losses are improving, but the company is still bleeding money and there is still plenty of cause for concern about its long-term prospects. Ahead of his announcements in San Francisco, Fortune caught up with Chen to hear more about his strategy—and Kim Kardashian.

    Fortune: What does returning to BlackBerry’s roots mean to you today?

    Chen: The overall returning to the roots is much beyond the device. The Classic [an upcoming BlackBerry device that will bring back its traditional trackpad] is an important part but it’s not the only part. Very early in my career here I talked about re-pivoting back to the enterprise. It implies not only the devices but also the enterprise using our software and server as the backbone. When BlackBerry was doing well almost everyone was running on BlackBerry enterprise server. When we lost our focus we lost quite a bit of traction and accounts. But the reason I went back to the Classic is that a tremendous number of customers want it.

    In light of that “return to roots,” how do you view innovation at BlackBerry? What role does it play today?

    The guiding principle of our development teams is that everybody is focused on the following pillars: security, privacy, productivity, and collaboration. We focus on all of those. For example, on BBM [BlackBerry Messenger] we just released the timed message feature—people call it the “Snapchat feature.” We allow people to retract messages, not just to recall them. The whole design center is really focused on security, privacy, productivity and collaboration. We’re not trying to compete on everything.

    Winning back developers is another aspect of returning to BlackBerry’s roots. How are you feeling about status with developer ecosystem?

    There are only a handful of apps, like Facebook, that we build native. We are relying on our relationship with Amazon for the others. Everything that appears on Amazon’s app store you can run on BB10 [the latest version of BlackBerry’s operating system]. In doing so we free up our enterprise developer community to focus on developer platforms. On that front the re-pivoting is only six to nine months old since I came in. We have some good traction but still a lot of work to be done.

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