It’s Over: BlackBerry to Stop Making Hardware
Like others before it, BlackBerry is exiting the smartphone hardware business. Instead, the long-struggling Canadian company will shift to a services-only model. This news comes as BlackBerry announced another unprofitable quarter, according to AppleInsider.
In what’s being described as a “tactical” shift for the company, BlackBerry CEO John Chen noted “The company plans to end all internal hardware development and will outsource that function to partners … Our financial foundation is strong, and our pivot to software is taking hold.”
Chen’s statement doesn’t seem to match BlackBerry’s latest financial statements, however.
In the previous quarter, the company reported a net loss overall of $372 million compared with a year-ago profit of $51 million. Revenue fell to $334 million from $490 million year over year.
As late as 2009, BlackBerry controlled over 20 percent of the worldwide smartphone OS market share. Since then, consumer tastes have shifted sharply to Android-based devices and Apple iPhones.
In the second quarter of 2016, BlackBerry accounted for just 0.1 percent of the market, according to Statista.