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BlackBerry claims compliance with content ruling
BlackBerry chief legal officer Steve Zipperstein said that it would respect the governmentâs new plan to require all smartphone manufacturers to use at least 30 percent local content within its devices, saying that the mobile technology company had been doing its share of the deal since 2008
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lackBerry chief legal officer Steve Zipperstein said that it would respect the government's new plan to require all smartphone manufacturers to use at least 30 percent local content within its devices, saying that the mobile technology company had been doing its share of the deal since 2008.
Beginning in 2017, all 4G smartphone manufacturers will have to use a minimum of 30 percent local components, be it hardware, software or in the design, as part of the government's efforts to promote the country's growing cell phone manufacturing sector.
According to Zipperstein, BlackBerry was already 'ahead of the curve' as it began implementing Indonesian components into its products in 2008.
Among the local contributions to BlackBerry products include the production of smartphone batteries in a Batam factory and the production of headset earbuds in Cibubur, West Java.
Zipperstein added that BlackBerry also ran a Global Application Vetting Center in Denpasar, Bali, where over 100,000 applications found on the BlackBerry World App Store had been tested, developed and processed since 2011, with 5,000 of the apps for the BlackBerry 10 developed by Indonesians. Around 1,500
Indonesian developers have contributed to the global app vetting process.
'My firm belief is that BlackBerry has already exceeded the requirements of the government's law. By doing so, jobs are being created and the point of the law itself is to provide economic opportunities [to Indonesians]. Therefore, we have been doing that and we will continue to do so in the future,' Zipperstein told The Jakarta Post in an interview on Tuesday.
BlackBerry Indonesia's government relations director, Kusuma Lienandjaja, added that the company also ran an innovation center in Bandung that provided engineering scholarships to the Bandung Institute of Technology, making the company's contributions 'extend beyond production'.
In another development in the company's cooperation with the government, Zipperstein also said that cybersecurity was currently a major issue for the country.
BlackBerry recently acquired three multiplatform software security firms and was in the process of purchasing a fourth, which Zipperstein said, would greatly improve BlackBerry's reputation as a bastion of security that could assist the government in building its cyber defenses.
'We are ready to assist the government in providing what it needs to improve the security of its mobile devices and we will also work with the government on that matter further,' he explained.
The Canadian mobile technology company has been posting positive cash flow during the last three consecutive quarters, earning the company's highest cash balance in the company's history of about US$3.3 billion. First quarter earnings for the 2016 fiscal year reached $137 million, up from $54 million in 2014.
