BlackBerry may finally quit handset business in 2016

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: The year 2016 is crucial for once highly popular smartphone BlackBerry. Considering the flagging sales, if the company fails to sell five million phones in next year, it may kill off the phone. In other words , the company may discontinue selling the BlackBerry handsets altogether.

According to industry reports, BlackBerry CEO John Chen said in an event on Saturday that the company needs to sell at least five million smartphones a year in order to make the business profitable. If it fails to do so, the company will quit the handsets business.

In order to give a fillip to the sales, the company will launch first Android phone BlackBerry Priv towards the end of this year. The device supports all the Android apps and services, and would compete with Android smartphones in the market which cast dark clouds over the BlackBerry sales.

Despite running Android, the new handset wwould come with the company's security technology, which can become a differentiating factor for the phone.