14 DAY TRIAL // BlackBerry has just revealed the Year-End and Q4 fiscal 2016 results, and numbers are robust enough to allow the Canadian company a moment to catch its breath.
Since John Chen took the lead as BlackBerry’s CEO, it’s been quite a race for profitability, which is likely to end the moment the hardware division will break even or start making money.
Even though analysts predicted the PRIV, BlackBerry’s first Android smartphone will sell decently enough to provide the company a good perspective for the rest of the year, the actual numbers fall short of the forecasts.
According to BlackBerry, only 600,000 PRIV units have been sold during its most recent quarter, which ended on February 29. The number is a bit worrisome because it falls short of BlackBerry’s expectations, but it’s also a drop of about 100,000 from the previous quarter.
There’s still time to improve BlackBerry smartphone sale
Despite the mobile phone division underperforming, John Chen claims that his company is very close to breaking even. When asked if BlackBerry plans to exit smartphone business, John Chen promised he would try to make the hardware division profitable by the end of September 2015, so it still has some time to boost BlackBerry smartphone sales.
“I truly believe that we're very, very close in being able to break even or start making money in devices. As you all know, and I said many times if we - despite all the efforts that we put in, if we cannot make money on the device business and it becomes a burden due to consolidation then I will have to get out of that particular business but that's not a big secret, I say it,” explains Chen.
He also confirmed that if by September his company won’t be able to find a way to make the mobile division profitable, then he will need to seriously consider being a software company only.
In the same piece of news, John Chen announced that his company plans to launch another Android smartphone soon, which will cost around $350. He also said that in order to break even, BlackBerry needs to sell around 3 million smartphones at an average price of $300, which means the mobile division must make at least $900 million in fiscal 2017.