Emerging Technologies Blog

BlackBerry Priv

Once dominant smartphone company BlackBerry Ltd might finally bid goodbye to the  smartphone business in 2016 and focus its attention on something more profitable if sales of its devices continue to plunge, according to the company's CEO John Chen, who revealed this at the Code/Mobile conference in California on Thursday.

Chen says his company would stop making handsets after launching the Android and BB 10 powered BlackBerry Priv if they don't make a healthy profit and could even abandon its BlackBerry 10 operating system entirely;immediately it moves its security features to Google's Android mobile operating system.

The new BlackBerry Priv slider smartphone would be the Canadian phone maker's last bet to make sure it stays in the handset business. Previous phones from the company did not perform well as it expected. For example, BlackBerry only sold 8,000 Classic and Passport phones in the first half of 2015.Worse than poor when compared to sales figures of the iPhone handsets from rival Apple Inc.If sales of the Priv smartphone falls through, it is game over for the company.

BlackBerry reportedly disclosed to  that it needs to sell as much as 5 million smartphones a year to reconsider staying in the business.It will take a lot from BlackBerry to reach that figure before the whole of 2016 runs out.

What are your thoughts on this?