Taipei, Jan. 26 (CNA) Terry Gou, chairman of Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., said Sunday that BlackBerry Ltd.'s new devices, assembled by Hon Hai's mobile unit, will debut at the Feb. 24-27 Mobile World Congress (MWC) tech fair in Spain.

Gou added that BlackBerry is offering an excellent platform with its outstanding security features, the BlackBerry 10 operating system and QNS software system, but lacks a strong manufacturing capability, so Hon Hai is expected to complement the Canadian handset maker.

"We are working with them to design a new device, and we will showcase multiple devices at the trade show in Barcelona in February," he said at the opening of the Hon Hai charity festival in Taipei, referring to the MWC show, without specifying the actual numbers and types of Blackberry devices.

Hon Hai, the world's largest contract electronics maker, announced in late December that its Hong Kong-listed subsidiary, FIH Mobile Ltd., had struck a five-year deal with BlackBerry to develop and manufacture new smartphone models.

In addition to focusing on tapping the rapidly growing smartphone market in Indonesia, the two will make new devices for other emerging markets, including Mexico, Hon Hai said in a statement.

Calling such strategic alliances "a breakthrough in the global technology industry," Hon Hai said the two companies will further cooperate in the future, including in mutual investments and global marketing.

BlackBerry is facing plunging sales and mounting losses, as its global smartphone market share shrinks. Its sales during the September-November period fell 56 percent to US$1.19 billion, below the estimate of US$1.59 billion predicted in a Bloomberg survey of analysts.

(By Jeffrey Wu)
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