WATERLOO (dpa-AFX) - Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry Limited (BBRY, BB.TO) said Monday that it has appointed Marty Beard as the company's chief operating officer, with immediate effect.
In the new position, Beard will be responsible for cross-functional organizations, including Marketing, BlackBerry 10 Application Development, Customer Care and Quality. He will also be responsible for instituting best practices and processes.
John Chen, Executive Chairman and CEO of BlackBerry said, 'BlackBerry continues to attract top talent to the company. Marty brings extensive experience in operations, marketing and serving customers through the best technologies and processes available.'
Beard most recently served as Chairman and CEO of LiveOps, Inc., a provider of cloud applications for customer service.
Prior to joining LiveOps, Marty was President of Sybase 365, a unit of mobile messaging and mobile commerce services unit Sybase Inc. He held a series of executive positions at that company, including SVP of Marketing.
Prior to joining Sybase, Marty worked at Oracle Corp. (ORCL) as vice president of Oracle Online, its e-Commerce service unit. He was responsible for leveraging the Web to improve customer sales and support at the company.
BBRY closed Friday's trading at $10.04. In Monday's pre-market trades, the stock is up $0.09 or 0.90 percent to $10.13.
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