BlackBerry to focus on mid-range Android devices in 2016, says CEO John Chen

High-end Priv "too expensive", admits Chen

The Priv, BlackBerry's first Android device, was "too expensive", CEO John Chen has admitted in an interview. However, the company is planning to launch two new mid-range Android devices this year, he added, indicating that the company's own BlackBerry 10 smartphone operating system is probably as good as dead.

It's fair to say that the BlackBerry Priv hasn't exactly set the world alight, and the company refused to say how many it has sold during its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call last week. It is also a year since the last BlackBerry 10-based device, the Leap, was released.

In an interview, Chen has admitted that the keyboard-bearing smartphone was "too expensive" and that this was a mistake. In response, he added, the company will instead release two mid-range Android handsets in the region of $400/£300.

"The fact that we came out with a high-end phone [as our first Android device] was probably not as wise as it should have been," Chen said during an interview with The National.

"A lot of enterprise customers have said to us: 'I want to buy your phone but $700 is a little too steep for me. I'm more interested in a $400 device'."

Chen didn't say much about the incoming smartphones, but confirmed that one will have a keyboard and the other will be fully touchscreen.

BlackBerry has long denied speculation that it's throwing in the towel with the BB10 operating system, but Chen explained during the interview that the company will continue to release updates to the software but won't release new BB10-powered hardware.

What's more, Chen admitted that BlackBerry may be forced to exit the hardware business if it doesn't become profitable soon - and that will mean selling vastly more handsets.

"Since I started at the company [in November 2013] I've been saying I'll make the handset business profitable. If I can't make it profitable because the market won't let me, I'll get out of the handset business. I love our handset business, but we need to make money," he said.