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Apple CEO Tim Cook was blunt when discussing the end of BlackBerry phones

On the same day that BlackBerry, once the leader in the smartphone market, announced it would stop making its own phones, Apple announced a new program to move onto its former turf.

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Apple is targeting big-business smartphone deployments, which used to be one of BlackBerry's main sources of revenue.

So the Financial Times asked Apple CEO Tim Cook what he thought about BlackBerry's announcement, which has been called the "end of an era."

Tim Cook
Tim Cook Andrew Burton/Getty

"I think their sales have been fairly low for a while," Cook told The FT. "We are very focused on the opportunity and we see it as massive."

Translation: This is Apple's world now, BlackBerry. Currently, BlackBerry claims 0.1% of the global smartphone market; Apple's iPhone claims a very profitable 13.8%.

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It's not entirely surprising that Apple's CEO would dispense with formal niceties when discussing the Canadian company.

Last December, BlackBerry CEO John Chen wrote a blog post calling Apple out about its privacy and security policies and which information it provides to law enforcement. He unsubtly said Apple's approach was leading to "a dark place."

Apple never publicly responded to the post. But Cook seems to have gotten the last laugh.

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