BlackBerry Swings to a Loss in 1Q16 but Keeps On Swinging
BlackBerry won 2,600 new customers in the last quarter
In the previous part of this series, we discussed how licensing deals with companies such as Cisco (CSCO) helped BlackBerry (BBRY) grow its software segment revenues by an impressive 150% in 1Q16. This growth was also driven by the new customers that BlackBerry’s software business has attracted.
During its fiscal 1Q16 earnings conference call, BlackBerry management announced deals with 2,600 new enterprise customers. This is 400 more than in fiscal 4Q15. These wins mainly span across healthcare and financial sectors.
Within the healthcare sector, BlackBerry signed deals with Grand River Hospital, CarePartners, and Trillium Health Partners, among others. Within the financials vertical, Blackstone (BX), ATB Financial, UniCredit Bank in Russia (RSX), and Financial Technologies in India (EPI) are among Blackberry’s new clients.
Meanwhile, BlackBerry’s most prominent customer win last quarter was the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). RBS is a big win for BlackBerry, and it comes at the expense of its main competitor in the mobile device management space—MobileIron (MOBL). During the conference call, BlackBerry mentioned that RBS has now established BES12 as the corporate standard for mobile device management.
BES12 software release to drive growth at BlackBerry
BES, or BlackBerry Enterprise Server, is the server that securely synchronizes emails, contacts, and calendar information with a company’s networks. According to BlackBerry, BES12 will be the main software release driving growth at the company in the short term. As the chart above shows, the software segment’s contribution toward BlackBerry’s overall revenues continues to increase.
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