BlackBerry Is 'Catering To Entrepreneurs' As They Move Away From Android

BlackBerry Ltd BBRY made the unusual decision to target startups and entrepreneurs in promoting its newest smartphone, the $275 Leap. Is this a useful ad campaign?

"I think it's not going to be a massive market," Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry told Benzinga. "But it will be a very niche market. It will be a profitable market. And the reason why BlackBerry is catering to entrepreneurs is because entrepreneurs are moving away from Android. They are all moving to Apple."

Related Link: Why Is This Analyst More Worried About Android Than BlackBerry?

'Tightly Targeted'

Rob Enderle, principal analyst at Enderle Group, thinks BlackBerry has an advantage in targeting niche markets.

"When you're trying to move a phone or product…you tightly target," Enderle told Benzinga. "You find a group of folks who may want what's special about your product and go after them almost exclusively. The large players have to spend for almost every single market, every single segment, but that dilutes how much money they can put on any individual group."

Enderle compared this to the risk that thousands of different companies could individually target the areas that Facebook Inc FB is after and hurt its business.

"That's kind of what BlackBerry is attempting to do here, trying to find an audience they can go after," Enderle added.

Licensing = Big Money

Sean Udall, CIO of Quantum Trading Strategies and author of The TechStrat Report, is a fan of BlackBerry. He issued a report at $10 and noted that there are "a lot of assets" the company has yet to monetize.

"I think they could try to sell their security software solution to startups," Udall told Benzinga. "That's a viable market. Go after that."

Udall is a fan of the licensing model regardless of the target.

"I think if they were to license their OS to the Android makers, I think they have a pretty good chance of being a successful company again," he said.

Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.