Canadian smartphone pioneer, BlackBerry, has always been on our watch list. Its CEO John Chen has been consistent in denying that the company isn’t going down and that it’s positive it will regain its place in the mobile industry or, at least, have a breakthrough. Under Chen’s leadership, BlackBerry is slowly joining the Android side by releasing BBM for Android, improving support, and bringing the Amazon Appstore to the platform.
No one is buying Blackberry yet because the company is still working hard to get into the game. What first started as a rumor that BlackBerry might use Android OS on new devices and after a series of leaks, that related-domains shopping spree, and the non-confirmation that an Android phone is coming, Chen finally showed off a new device, namely the BlackBerry Priv, in a rather cringe-worthy interview.
So the Blackberry Priv is now official. “Priv” stands for privacy and privilege–somehow telling us the smartphone is really special. There’s that certain air of exclusivity. John Chen has also shared that one of his newest goals is to sell five (5) million smartphones every year. That’ s lot and it’s not really easy to achieve given the tight competition now within the smartphone industry–even bigger names like Samsung and Sony are having a hard time beating the smaller Chinese device makers.
John Chen said in a recent interview that if the five million phones a year isn’t achieved, then the company may have to say goodbye to the handset business. Chen shared this information with The Verge at the Code Mobile conference this week.
His statement reminds us of a similar news yesterday about Sony where Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai said 2016 will be a make-or-break year. If not, they might have to plan an alternative. As for BlackBerry, the next few months and quarters, or the rest of the year may be too challenging. We’re not being pessimistic here but 5M handsets is not achievable especially if only 800,000 Blackberry phones were sold last quarter.
VIA: The Verge
SOURCE: BlackBerry
