In a note sent out to investors today Morgan Stanley claims that BlackBerry’s latest devices are not selling “anywhere close” to they should be. It’s talking about the BlackBerry Classic and Passport. Both were released last year first through Amazon in the U.S. Only recently AT&T brought both of them to its network. The firm claims that as many as 8,000 units of the Classic and Passport have been sold, “well below” the 2-3 million unit sales Blackberry needs in FY16.
According to the firm’s research resellers are finding it tough to sell BlackBerry smartphones to customers, even enterprise customers, who have long been ardent users of BlackBerry devices.
When the Passport was launched last year its initial run seemed to hold promise. The first batch of 200,000 units was sold out very quickly. Even the second batch didn’t take long enough to be sold out.
The Classic arrived late last year. Pre-order inventory in North America was sold out in December. Both smartphones have been available unlocked and off contract from Amazon and BlackBerry’s own website since the day they were released.
Morgan Stanley says that BlackBerry might not be able to meet its $500 million software revenue goal to plug the gap that the hardware business leaves. The firm says BlackBerry will not “get anywhere close” to this target.
No response from BlackBerry yet.
Filed in . Read more about BlackBerry, BlackBerry Classic and BlackBerry Passport.