BlackBerry defines the 'Prosumer' its largest stockholder wants it to go after

Prem Watsa is the founder, chairman and CEO of Fairfax Financial which makes him BlackBerry's largest shareholder. His company has already offered $4.7 billion to purchase the troubled manufacturer, although we do not know if certain deadlines requested by the BlackBerry board have been met. Watsa has been quoted as saying that BlackBerry will be focused on Enterprise and Prosumers, and it is that latter word that requires a definition.

In a published report out of Canada on Sunday, a couple of BlackBerry spokesmen explained what Watsa was talking about. Holding up his BlackBerry, Michael Clewley, director of handheld software product management, said that Prosumers buy a BlackBerry for communications and to enhance productivity. Clewley went on to say that these BlackBerry buyers aren't interested in the latest apps. The apps they use aren't the hot trending ones, but are downloaded with a specific task in mind.


Clewly said that despite this focus on the so-called Prosumer, BlackBerry is still trying to land hugely popular apps like Netflix and Instagram, even though by definition the Prosumer would not be interested in either one. With BlackBerry 10.2 including a Jelly Bean build of Android, more developers might be wooed by the Canadian based OEM to move over their app so that it will work for BlackBerry 10 users. The executive said, "What we find is developers who bring their apps to BlackBerry 10 actually see a good uptake of those applications but you've got to sort of win them over. So I think we're doing things to help users get the more fun applications or the media-type applications and we're continuing to drive and go after important productivity focused applications."

Todd Wood, senior vice president of design, says a Prosumer is someone who will "...create more content than they consume, in most cases, and arguably that was the original definition of prosumer. There's a set of BlackBerry users that really think of themselves as enterprises in and of themselves so they want to choose a more professional or semi-professional device."

Any Prosumers out there looking to buy a new BlackBerry?

source: Thespec via BerryReview