BlackBerry will stop making smartphones if it continues to cost money – update

BlackBerry will stop making smartphones if it doesn’t make a profit from them. That says director John Chen in an interview. Right now it only costs BlackBerry money to make smartphones.

Less and less of BlackBerry’s revenue comes from hardware sales and BlackBerry currently earns only 37 percent of its money from smartphones, according to the previous quarterly figures at the end of March. If BlackBerry can’t turn the loss on phones into profit in the short term, it will stop making devices, Chen said in an interview with Reuters news agency. “If I can’t make money off phones, I won’t be in the phone market.”

Chen says BlackBerry is completely focused on security and hopes the company will get the wind from whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations last year. The software will focus on security and chat application BBM as well. “We’re not going to compete with WhatsApp, we’re going to focus more on secure communication, secure chatting.” Chen’s line isn’t new; Ever since the emergence of WhatsApp, BlackBerry has been trying to differentiate itself by emphasizing BBM’s security.

BlackBerry is currently ‘burning money’ and Chen, who has been running the company for about six months, sees a need to act quickly. He already decided, among other things, to make a deal with Foxconn for making cheaper BlackBerry 10 smartphones. Meanwhile, BlackBerry 10 isn’t selling as well as the Canadian company had hoped; more devices with the old BlackBerry OS 7 are still sold, while the market share has dropped to between 1 and 2 percent.

Update, 16:18: Chen further commented on the Reuters article in a blog post. He states that his statements have been taken out of context stating “I have no intention of leaving this market in the short term”. He also says he is doing everything he can to become profitable again. Initially, this message stated that Chen will stop using smartphones “in the short term” if no profit is made with it.