As Apple continued to make headlines with the release of the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus and the announcement of the Apple Watch for next year, BlackBerry announced second-quarter losses totaling $207 million. The company implemented wide-ranging job cuts during the quarter and brought in $916 million in revenue, $50 million less than in the first three months of the year.
BlackBerry recently released the Passport, a "phablet" (halfway between a smartphone and a tablet), hoping to regain lost ground in the business world, but experts think it won't be enough.
"BlackBerry is a company that's going to take a much longer time to turn around," said Rapid Ratings International CEO James H. Gellert to The New York Times. "We are still in a limbo period for them, there's a lot left to prove."
The latest market share statistics from the International Data Corporation (IDC), which are also from 2014's second quarter, show that BlackBerry OS is the preferred option of only 0.5 percent of smartphone users worldwide, down from 2.8 percent in the same period last year and 13.6 percent in 2011. This bodes ill for the company as more businesses move to a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) model, allowing employees to use their personal phones in the workplace.
Apple support providers can deploy iPads and Macs in workplaces that choose to take advantage of Apple's increased focus on the enterprise. The iPhone 6 is noticeably faster than its predecessors and, with the recently released iOS 8 and the upcoming OS X Yosemite, it will be easier to transition between a mobile device and a desktop or laptop computer, allowing workers to take their work from the office into the field.
