It has been a long time since BlackBerry struggling to claim fame in the market, however now the brand is set to try out its luck introducing first-ever BlackBerry phone powered by Google’s Android software. Blackberry CEO John Chen, who is a software industry veteran, was hired in 2013 to save the Canadian company. And upon his arrival he make a decision to try luck by joining hands with the world’s most popular operating system, Android.
Now BlackBerry is ready to sell the $700 BlackBerry Priv that’s the first smartphone by the compared not powered with its own mobile software. The company is expecting to win over its lost customers, who it lost out to Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy phones. However, in case the mobile phone fails to garner attention then it can be expected that it will be end of the BlackBerry smartphone. “If this doesn’t resonate with users, there’s not much else they can do,” said Chris Hazelton, an analyst at 451 Research.
Lately, Chen was heard asserting a number of times that he is going to dump the smartphone business lest it doesn’t turn a profit. For the unbeknownst, Blackberry has faced a loss of more than $6 billion in the last two and half years and Priv is its last bet. In order to rise in the market again, BlackBerry will require to sell 5 million smartphones next year, however that seems like a task impossible to attain as it sold just 800,000 last quarter.
You must consider the fact that Blackberry-powered smartphones represent less than half a percent of a market lead by phones that run on Android and on iOS. Even Chen agreed that 2016 will be a make-or-break year for both the company and his leadership. “Otherwise, I have to think twice about what I do there,” he said at a mobile conference in October.
The Priv will be launched on Friday. Earlier it was expected that the slider phone would run on the BlackBerry 10 software, however over the summer the leaks and images confirmed that it is going to be Android-powered Blackberry. Later in September, BlackBerry made the big announcement that it’s going to sell an Android smartphone in the fourth quarter. As Priv stands for “privacy” and “privilege”, it aims to address the top complaint of former and current BlackBerry users: the lack of apps.
