BlackBerry CEO discusses some of his plans for the upcoming year.
Blackberry CEO, John Chen, had revealed earlier this year that BlackBerry would be launching two new mid-range smartphones in 2016. He had hinted earlier a mid-year launch of these smartphones, but we finally have some concrete information.
In an interview with MobileSyrup, Chen said “I was thinking about doing that more in July timeframe. I have spoken about having two of them in between now and the end of this fiscal year, and they usually they both of them more in the mid range and mid to high, not going to be a high end phone,” so it’s pretty clear now, that BlackBerry won’t be launching any higher end phones this year and will only focus on mid-range devices.
He also added that BlackBerry is “entering into new and more favourable agreements with manufacturing partners” in an effort to de-risk its balance sheets. On being asked about the cash flow of BlackBerry, he said that the company expects to maintain a free cash flow the entire year. However, it was reported that BlackBerry lost $670mn in Q1 FY2017 because of decrease in revenue and also inventory writedown
BlackBerry launched the BlackBerry Priv in India earlier this year with a 5.4-inch 1440p AMOLED display and curved edges. It’s a high-end phone with decently powerful hardware. BlackBerry also started rolling out Android Marshmallow for the Priv which improved various features of the phone and also helped with the various privacy options to maintain access for apps. BlackBerry also announced WatchDog an email protector that control sent files through file-level DRM protection.
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