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BlackBerry has hired Alex Thurber to be its new senior vice president for global device sales. The new hire comes as the company is still dealing with poor sales of its hardware products, including the recent BlackBerry Priv smartphone.

BlackBerry

According to The Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Thurber will oversee BlackBerry's in-house sales teams as well as its efforts to generate additional revenue from distributing devices through carriers and other partners. "My focus is to achieve BlackBerry's strategic priority in making the device business profitable," Mr. Thurber said in an email.

Thurber previously was the head of global sales for the Seattle-based WatchGuard Technologies, which creates security firewall technology. Thurber helped to boost its revenue in its last six quarters.

The new executive will be tasked with increasing sales for BlackBerry's devices, which have declined greatly over the past few years. The company recently revealed that it only sold 600,000 smartphones in its last fiscal quarter. BlackBerry has plans to launch two new smartphones, both using the Android operating system, later in 2016.

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