BlackBerry announced the 9720 QWERTY smartphone with favorite social apps and a dedicated BlackBerry Messenger key. This BlackBerry slated for release in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America in the coming weeks is based on the previous version of BlackBerry OS, BlackBerry 7.1. It has similar styling the BlackBerry Q5 and BlackBerry Curve. It will come in Black, Blue, Pink, Purple and White.
The BlackBerry 9720 smartphone features a 2.8” screen, 800 MHz processor trackpad for easy navigation, 5MP camera and 512MB on board memory expandable via a microSD card slot. It also has a built-in FM radio. It has a 1450mAH removable battery.
BB OS 7 lets you swipe to unlock the phone or access the camera from the lock screen, as well as additional enhancements. BackBerry Messenger now includes BBM Voice, which lets you chat over Wi-Fi for free.
BlackBerry Multicast, lets you can type your message once and post it simultaneously and instantly to your friends on BBM, Twitter and Facebook. You can even snap a picture and post it to multiple social networks all at the same time, right from the camera app.
The BlackBerry 9720 works with Blackberry Enterprise Server. This version of BlackBerry does not work with BlackBerry Hub.
BlackBerry has been in the news for needing to either sell or restructure. The most recent releases were the BlackBerry Z10, QWERTY BlackBerrry Q10 and BlackBerry Q5. BlackBerry Messenger for iPhone and Android is slated to come soon and is in Beta testing. BlackBerry has been using some strange marketing methods.
The New York Times reported that the abrupt decline of BlackBerry illustrates how consumers and investors demand almost instant change these days, especially from tech companies.
At one point BlackBerry was 50% of the smartphone market, now it is a very small percentage.
Android amounted to 51.5% sales share of the smartphone market with iOS following at 42.5% in the quarter ending in June 2013,