In an attempt to limit the number of employees the company has to lay off in the long run, the CEO of BlackBerry has officially announced they will no longer be manufacturing smartphones anymore. This is a move that we've seen coming for a long time. John Chen has even alluded to this multiple times in the past, but had remained optimistic and hoping the BlackBerry Priv could turn things around for them.
It's still unclear if the company will drop their BlackBerry OS entirely, but they did follow through with previous reports that said they would focus entirely on Android this year, and they are reportedly focusing on the software-side of things. And this is a place where the company has done a job good, too. BlackBerry has often rolled out security updates faster than the rest of the competition, and has at times even beat Google to the punch. Making a profit on hardware just hasn't been where BlackBerry has excelled.
""We have decided to discontinue all the handset hardware development, only hardware""
We've seen multiple reports of the BlackBerry Priv not being able to sell as many units as expected. So it makes sense for John Chen to announce the change the company is making this week. He said they will still continue with development and manufacturing for a little while longer, but they want to be out it completely by the end of their fiscal year (which is February 28th). Chen says the company will be able to save a lot of money since they won't have to carry inventory and won't have to manage as much equipment.
We've already seen this shift recently with the BlackBerry DTEK50 and the upcoming DTEK60. BlackBerry will license their technology and brand to other companies so they can develop and manufacture the smartphones. They've already signed a deal with a telecom joint venture in Indonesia who will manufacture, distribute and promote BlackBerry devices within the country. Chen confirms these will also be running their secure versions of the Android OS.
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