BlackBerry director: we are out of danger

BlackBerry CEO John Chen claims his company is out of danger. Last year, the smartphone maker tried unsuccessfully to sell itself to other companies in the telecom industry. The biggest financial problems are over, the CEO thinks.

Analysts feared a rapid bankruptcy of the Canadian BlackBerry last year, but those worries are no longer necessary, Chen claims. “We are definitely out of the danger zone. The panic is gone. We are a viable company and the only question is how big we will be.”

That does not mean that the period of loss is over. The latest quarterly figures showed that BlackBerry still loses tens of millions of euros every three months, but the loss is less than last year. Chen hopes the company will break even within a few months. The losses weakened the manufacturer’s financial position.

The CEO has shifted the company’s strategy from the consumer market to that for business customers. BlackBerry wants to sell ten million smartphones a year in the coming years and earn money from it. The company’s other income comes from services and software; now accounts for more than two-thirds of sales. It sold a research division in Germany and entered into partnerships: with Amazon for the Amazon Appstore, with Android apps on BlackBerry devices, and with Foxconn for the production of cheaper BB10 devices.

Despite this, BlackBerry still comes with new devices. In the run-up to the release in September, it is gradually announcing more and more details of the Passport, a passport-sized device with a touch-sensitive physical QWERTY keyboard and square 4.5 “screen.

John Chen with the upcoming BlackBerry Passport smartphone