Blackberry might sell its handset unit if the company continues to be in the red, CEO John Chen told Reuters yesterday. "If I cannot make money on handsets, I will not be in the handset business", he said, adding that a final decision in this regard will be taken soon.
In March, the Canadian company reported a quarterly net loss of $423 million, compared with a $98 million profit from the prior year's quarter, and a 64 percent drop in its revenues. The company was at its peak in 2011, when it shipped 52.3 million devices.
Although Blackberry is apparently mulling exiting mobile phone-making business, the company will continue working on its mobile operating system, software business, and enterprise server services, Chen said.
Also, the company is planning to acquire or team up with other companies in industries such as healthcare, financial and legal services, and more, that could benefit from BlackBerry's well-known network security offerings.
The company has lost most of its smartphone market to Apple and Google. Last August, it even announced that it was up for sale, but the option was put on the back burner when Chen took the helm of the company in November. The new CEO is hopeful that the company will return to profit sometime in 2016.
Chen is viewed by tech industry insiders as a turnaround artist. In the late 1990s, he turned around enterprise software company Sybase, which was eventually acquired by SAP AG in 2010.