Blackberry CEO John Chen, confirmed as much Thursday during a press event at CES, reiterating his desire to get BlackBerry out ...
Blackberry CEO John Chen, confirmed as much Thursday during
a press event at CES, reiterating his desire to get BlackBerry out of the
handset business.
"The last model we engineered and designed ourself, yes
that will be the last one," Chen said of the Mercury, which will be
released sometime in this year.
That may sound like bad news for BlackBerry loyalists but
the CEO said the shift will actually enable the company to get more of its
handsets on the market via partnerships since it will no longer need to devote
its resources to hardware.
Instead of investing in costly hardware, BlackBerry will
work with partners, like TCL, who will create their own BlackBerry-branded
handsets.
"What you're going to see over time is more phones.
There's going to be more BlackBerry phones out there because now I have
multiple parties creating and distributing and I have local party to compete in
the local space — countries which I normally can't compete with," Chen
said.
Whether the power of the BlackBerry brand will hold once the
company completely hands over the reins to its partners is another matter. Chen
said he believed demand for the devices would persist, particularly in the
enterprise space and within governments.
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