Blackberry could ditch smartphone business to save company

Posted on 10 Apr 2014 at 10:34, by Gareth Halfacree

Blackberry could abandon the smartphone business altogether following poor sales of its latest devices.

John Chen, the company's CEO, said that if the money dried up, Blackberry would have to stop making handsets:

'If I cannot make money on handsets, I will not be in the handset business,' he told Reuters.

Chen indicated that annual shipments of 10 million handsets would be enough to make a profit, although Blackberry only shipped two million in the last quarter.

He also criticised past mistakes for putting the company in a perilous position, saying the company could no longer speculate on success. In March Blackberry reported a quarterly net loss of $423m and a 64 per cent slump in revenue:

'You have to live short term. Maybe the prior management had the luxury to bet the world would come to it. I don't have the luxury at all. I'm losing money and burning cash.'

Once the must-have gadget, Blackberry has lost ground to rival companies such as Apple, Google and Samsung. As demand for new touchscreen devices took off Blackberry, then known as Research In Motion, continued to make phones with physical keyboards. The company attempted to reinvent itself with a brand-new operating system and new phones such as the BlackBerry Z30 and the more traditional BlackBerry Q5, but sales have been slow.

When it launched Blackberry Messenger on Android and iOS, some believed it was a sign that Blackberry could exit the hardware business and concentrate purely on its messaging service.