Blackberry Sales Continue To Miss Their Mark

Sales of BlackBerry Ltd BBRY continue to miss their mark with estimates of 850,000 handset sales for its fourth-quarter 2015 falling short as CEO John Chen reported total unit sales of around 600,000 units, according to a recent Forbes report.

Ewan Spence of Forbes said much of that drop was attributed to its latest handset, the BlackBerry Priv, which is BlackBerry's first Android handset.

"It was hoped that pairing BlackBerry's brand name and focus on security with the most popular mobile operating system on the planet would lead to a winning combination. That doesn't appear to be the case," Spence said.

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Spence also cited a CNet report, which put out the comments of an AT&T Executive: "The BlackBerry Priv is really struggling," an anonymous executive said last week. "We've seen more returns than we would like."

Looking Forward

Meanwhile, the report stated, "BlackBerry is expected to focus on a number of cheaper Android-powered devices during the rest of 2016 with Chen confirming at least two more Android handsets hitting the market."

According to the CEO, BlackBerry needs to sell three million handsets this calendar year "for the hardware division to break even."

"If it doesn't, then I can't see much point in BlackBerry remaining in the hardware game selling to a smaller and smaller pool of hardcore fans."

"BlackBerry has a solid suite of apps that now comfortably run on Android OS," and Spence said, "Switching to a pure ‘software and services' cloud-based model for 2017 and beyond is looking increasingly like the only route left open to the once all-conquering smartphone leader."

At time of writing, BlackBerry was up 0.74 percent at $7.45.