Following Another Quarterly Loss, BlackBerry Officially Shuts Down Smartphone Business
BlackBerry will no longer make smartphones. The company, a true pioneer in the space, has decided to focus fully on the software side of things as its hardware business has been sliding for several years.
The company’s latest earnings report, released this week, saw a significant dip in revenue and a loss of more than $370 million. With less than 1% of the world’s smartphone market share—from more than half a decade ago—BlackBerry’s smartphone business has been bleeding money for a while now.
“Today we make our first significant step toward leading as a software company by announcing that we are transitioning from doing internal handset hardware development to leveraging our third party partner to provide that function,” said Ralph Pini, Chief Operating Officer and General Manager, Mobility Solutions, at BlackBerry, in a statement. “This is what the future looks like for our business, and it is the right move as we progress towards profitability.”
CEO John Chen, who joined in 2013 to rescue BlackBerry, said a couple of years ago the company was open to ditching smartphones and has been bracing for the transition since then. Moving forward, BlackBerry will cease in-house development of phones and outsource to partners.
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