A report by UAE’s The National says BlackBerry is planning to launch two mid-range Android smartphones this year but doesn’t have any more BB10 devices in the pipeline. However, it will continue releasing updates for BB10.
Company CEO John Chen is also quoted as saying the decision to produce a premium-priced phone as BlackBerry’s first Android device “was probably not as wise as it should have been”.
BlackBerry’s quarterly results, released at the beginning of the month, showed smartphone sales of 600,000 for the December 2015 to February 2016 period; a drop of 100,000 devices from the previous quarter.
Mr Chen also repeated a previous warning: that he’d stop producing BlackBerry phones if the business couldn’t make any money from them. “Since I started at the company I’ve been saying I’ll make the handset business profitable. If I can’t make it profitable because the market won’t let me, then I’ll get out of the handset business.”
[More details: The National; New York Times; Wall Street Journal]