Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry
is wooing Apple customers with a cash offer for trade-ins of iPhones for its
new square-screened, keyboard-equipped Passport.
The promotion was announced
yesterday and will be available starting next month until February 13, in
Canada and the United States.
Customers who trade in their iPhones
could receive up to $400 cashback depending on the model and condition of their
trade-in, plus a $150 gift card.
This marks the first time that
BlackBerry has gone head-to-head with Apple since the Canadian firm launched a
turnaround plan last year aimed at stemming massive losses. The Passport was
launched in September.
Named for its approximate size to
the travel document, the phone was designed to win back key corporate users
after BlackBerry was effectively knocked out of the highly competitive consumer
smartphone market dominated by Apple and Samsung.
Investors seemed pleased, pushing up
the Waterloo, Ontario-based company’s share price slightly in morning trading.
But analysts were more skeptical.
Carl Simard of Medici called it a very “desperate move.”
In September, BlackBerry reported it
narrowed its loss in the latest quarter, and expressed optimism that its major
restructuring and new business-friendly devices would help fuel a turnaround.
For the three months ended August
30, BlackBerry posted a loss of USD 207 million on USD 916 billion in revenues
largely split between sales of services and software and more than two million
smartphones.
The Canadian manufacturer pioneered
the smartphone market but has struggled to keep up with competitors in recent
years. Last year, the company introduced the BlackBerry 10 operating system and
new smartphones in an effort to regain ground lost to rivals such as Apple and
others using the Google Android operating system.
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