BlackBerry plans to stop using smartphones after 2016 due to poor sales

BlackBerry wants to make a profit from the sale of smartphones next year. If that fails, the company will consider pulling the plug on that business unit. It’s not the first time this has been suggested.

Chen said this in an interview at the Code/Mobile convention being held in the United States. There, the BlackBerry CEO announced that a profit should be made next year from the sale of smartphones, various American media reported, including Cnet. If the business results do not show a positive picture, it is possible that BlackBerry will no longer continue to make hardware itself. “Otherwise, I’ll have to think about what I’m doing here,” Chen said of his possible decision to leave the smartphone market.

Next year BlackBerry will mainly rely on the Priv for its sales, a recently announced smartphone that runs on Android and has a slide-out keyboard. With an Android-based smartphone, the Canadian manufacturer hopes to have more success than with its own BlackBerry operating system. When showing the Priv, Chen already said that a lack of apps is the biggest obstacle for BlackBerry OS.

Chen also points out that two new versions of BlackBerry OS 10 are coming, so users are assured of updates for some time. Whether there will be new smartphones with their own operating system on the market must be determined by the market, according to Chen. The company therefore seems to want to focus more on software development, something that Chen confirmed in the interview. In addition, BlackBerry will also focus more emphatically on the Android operating system; with the Priv, the company has built in tools that focus on security and privacy.

In the company results, BlackBerry has shown declining sales for many quarters in a row. The company has taken several measures in recent years, including shifting its focus to software and business services. About a year and a half ago, BlackBerry also indicated that leaving the smartphone market was one of the possibilities if no profit is made with it.