@BlackBerry launches Blackberry Leap at MWC - Blackberry's latest Touchscreen Leap seeking Profits as Slider Beckons

Blackberry has leapt back into the touchscreen game, based on their recently launched offering at the MWC (Mobile World Conference) in Barcelona, Spain on Tuesday March 3^rd 2015!

They've launched the Blackberry Leap, their first fully Touchscreen smartphone that's NOT sporting their trademark physical Keyboard as reported in the article “Blackberry outs touchscreen Leap, teases slider Blackberry”, published March 3, 2015 12:36 AM PST, by Roger Cheng, CNET News.

Their previously launched smartphones, including the Blackberry Classic that made a splash on AT&T on Friday February 20th 2015 as reported in my blog article entitled “US$649.99 Blackberry Passport and US$419.99 Blackberry Classic - Why Americans are ready to fall in love with Blackberry” were all smartphones with this physical keyboard.

In addition to the Blackberry Leap, which will go live in Europe in April 2015 for US$275 on a two year contract, the company also teased an unknown Blackberry model with a slide out keyboard. Blackberry plans to release a second Blackberry Porsche and possibly another Blackberry Classic.

To list them out, they are an impressive lineup all launched in 2014, albeit none of them are a hit:

1.      Blackberry Classic

2.      Blackberry Passport

3.      Blackberry Porsche

4.      Blackberry Z3

So why is Blackberry so adamant for a hit in the smartphone game despite seeing continuous success in the Corporate world with their Blackberry BES 12 for secure Cloud Computing as noted in my Geezam blog article entitled “AnyConnect for Samsung Knox is a Cisco Systems partnership for Secure VPN Communications”.

Because every penny counts to the still recovering Blackberry!

Blackberry Leap - Specs of Blackberry's latest Leap into Touchscreen seeking Profits

Blackberry desperately needs a hit, being as smartphones account a full 3/4 of their Profits from the sale of their smartphones.

The 5" smartphones looks like the Blackberry Z3 but without the keyboard as noted in the article “Blackberry unveils all-touch five-inch Leap”, published March 3, 2015 By Liam Tung, ZDNet.

It runs on Blackberry OS 10.3.1 and the 5" display has a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixel resolution (294 pixels per inch). The Blackberry Leap is powered by Qualcomm's MSM 8960 Snapdragon S4 1.5GHz processor that's supported by 2GB of RAM, 16GB internal of storage and 128GB microSD Card support.

This, interestingly, is the same processor used by the Blackberry Z3 as noted in the article “Blackberry Leap release date price, specifications: new budget smartphone is aimed at young professionals”, published 03 March 15 By Jim Martin, PC Advisor.

At last it ready for the selfie trend, as its got a 2 Megapixel Front facing Camera and a 8 megapixel Rear facing camera. All this is wrapped up in a delicious black candybar shape with 4G LTE Internet support and a 2800mAh non-removable battery for about twenty five (25) hours worth of battery life..

Blackberry Needs a Hit with the Leap – Leap of Faith as unknown Slider coming

You’ll still be tethered to your charger, depending on your usage of the Blackberry Leap which gets about 25 hours on a single charge. So prepare to be somewhat underwhelmed by the lack of performance. Still, that’s rather nice that they provided 128GB microSD Card support, as Cloud Internet Storage isn't always reliable.

So yes, Blackberry really needs a hit, albeit based on the specs of the Blackberry Leap, there is nothing exciting that sets it apart from the competition in the same price range. But the concept of a Slider, which also made a showing at MWC 2015!

Blackberry’s  sales have basically been falling off a cliff according to stats from Analyst Gartner as noted in the article “Blackberry unveils Leap with no physical keyboard at MWC”, published 3 March 2015, BBC News.

According to Analyst Gartner, their Smartphone sales have been falling since 2011:

1. 51.5 million handsets in 2011
2. 18.6 million handsets in 2013
3. 7.9 million handsets in 2014

Another analyst, eMarketer, expects UK sales to drop to 700,000 from the lofty high of some 2.5 million units in 2013. So with more Smartphone coming later in 2015, will these smartphones being launched at MWC (Mobile World Conference) in Barcelona, Spain marks a turnaround for the company? We’ll just have to wait until the summer of 2015 to find out!