As BlackBerry weathers rough times, the Canadian OEM on Monday published an open letter aimed at reassuring customers that they’ll be taken care of going forward.
Reuters reported that the letter was published in 30 news outlets across nine countries.
The letter boasts BlackBerry’s “substantial cash on hand” and a balance sheet that is debt free, as well as cost-cutting measures that the company claims will reduce expenses by 50 percent. Unfortunately, part of those measures include the previously announced slashing over 40 percent of its workforce.
The letter goes on to tout what BlackBerry deems “best in class” productivity tools, security and enterprise mobile management platform.
The company concedes that there is “a lot of competition out there” and allows that “BlackBerry is not for everyone.” Still, the prevailing message was that BlackBerry isn’t going anywhere and those that do use the company’s products can rest assured that their devices and services will be supported going forward.
While the company considers a $4.7 billion bid by Fairfax Financial to take the company private, rumors have swirled that Cisco, SAP, Google and even co-found Mike Lazaridis have all considered offers for the Canadian OEM.
BlackBerry has seen its share of headlines lately and none of them good. BlackBerry’s long-delayed BlackBerry 10 smartphones have seen a tepid reception. The company reported a staggering near-$1 billion loss on $1.6 billion in revenue for the second quarter. The dismal second-quarter revenue was attributed to approximately 3.7 million BlackBerry smartphones shipped during the quarter, the majority of which were BB 7 handsets.