14 DAY TRIAL // We still don't know how successful BlackBerry PRIV is for the Canadian company, but the latest statements coming from John Chen seem very optimistic.
During BlackBerry's press conference at CES 2016 trade fair, the company's CEO John Chen has announced that the PRIV will be available for purchase in the United States at three additional carriers: Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon.
Chen has also offered some insight into his company's plans for this year, and one of the many interesting things he has said at the press event is that BlackBerry will launch at least one or two Android smartphones in 2016.
The debut of BlackBerry PRIV addressed the application gap that most users had been complaining about in the last couple of years, Chen has explained at the event.
BlackBerry 10 OS is not dead yet
MobileSyrup reports that when asked if his company plans to stop launching BlackBerry 10 smartphones, Chen has said that he is trying to make money and will go wherever that leads him.
“I’m trying to rebuild a business in an industry that’s very competitive, but we have a lot of know-how and concepts, and we know we can expand that consumer to be a professional consumer. It’s worth a shot and that’s why we did what we did with the Priv,” added John Chen.
While this doesn't necessarily mean the death of BlackBerry 10, John Chen has not ruled out the possibility. He has also said that “it's too early to outline a plan,” so until BlackBerry PRIV sales numbers are published, nothing is sure.
In the same piece of news, BlackBerry PRIV has been confirmed to receive the highly anticipated Android 6.0 Marshmallow update in Q1 2016.
Currently, BlackBerry PRIV ships with Android 5.1.1 Lollipop operating system right out of the box, but the Canadian company delivers monthly security updates.
If you don't own a PRIV and would like to know more about BlackBerry's first Android smartphone, you can always check out our full BlackBerry PRIV review.