While BlackBerry used to be the darling of the mobile phone industry with its QWERTY keyboard smartphones, its exclusive BBM service, and its ability to send secure emails, things certainly aren’t looking up for the Canadian company. The company had recently announced their Q4 figures and it looks like things aren’t going so well.
According to the numbers, BlackBerry has managed to sell 1.6 million smartphones in Q4 alone. To the layman these are a lot of phones, but compared to the same period last year, it represents a rather steep decline. That same period last year saw BlackBerry sell 3.4 million smartphones, so to see it drop to 1.6 million is a bit disheartening.
However it seems that not all is lost. Despite BlackBerry’s declining hardware sales, their software sales appear to be on the rise and now accounts for 57% of the company’s revenue, pulling in as much as $67 million in revenue and rising by 20%. This is more or less in line with BlackBerry’s new focus as the company’s CEO John Chen had stated earlier that they are shifting from a hardware to a software company.
Speaking during MWC 2015 earlier this month, Chen had stated, “We are committed to making software as a business. We are going to evolve.” So far the figures looks like they are headed in the right direction.
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