John Chen

Even though BlackBerry sold just 600,000 handsets in its last fiscal quarter, the company's CEO John Chen is keeping it in the hardware business, at least for now. In a new interview, Chen repeated his earlier statements about the company planning to launch two new two mid-range Android phones later in 2016. One with a physical keyboard and one with a full touchscreen.

According to The National:

Mr Chen said that BlackBerry's handset division had shown some signs of improvement during the last quarter, with losses halving compared with the previous quarter, but said that the company would exit the segment if it could not achieve profitability.

Chen also stated that the company's first Android smartphone, the BlackBerry Priv, may have priced itself out of more sales:

Mr Chen admitted that the Priv "was too high-end a product", with its target market of enterprise customers put off by the handset's US$700 price tag. "The fact that we came out with a high end phone [as our first Android device] was probably not as wise as it should have been," Mr Chen said during a visit to Abu Dhabi. "A lot of enterprise customers have said to us, 'I want to buy your phone but $700 is a little too steep for me. I'm more interested in a $400 device'."

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