BlackBerry’s chief executive officer John Chen confirmed the Q20 will be renamed BlackBerry Classic. Mr. Chen confirmed the name change to reporters.
Chen changes the name of BlackBerry Q20
Chen gave everyone a glimpse of the BlackBerry Q20 during the Mobile World Congress event. Interestingly enough, Chen referenced the device as BlackBerry Classic several times during the event, and his handler had to keep correcting him on the name. The Q20 featured a similar Bold look and classic keyboard. This phone was primarily designed to appeal to corporate and government agencies. Reverting the name back to BlackBerry Classic should hopefully win over the company’s primary customer base.
Despite BlackBerry’s current problems selling their phones in the market, the company has no plans of selling the brand. As Chen explained in a recent blog post, “BlackBerry is not a handset-only company. We offer an end-to-end solution and devices are an important part of that equation.That’s why we’re complementing our Devices business with other revenue streams from enterprise services and software, to messaging. We’re also investing in emerging solutions such as Machine to Machine technologies that will help to power the backbone of the Internet of Things. We will do everything in our power to continue to rebuild this business and deliver devices with the iconic keyboard and other features that you have come to expect from this brand.”
BlackBerry’s newer phones fail to sell
The company sold 3.4 million smartphones during the fiscal fourth quarter, and 2.3 million of that number were old BlackBerry 7 phones. During the fiscal third quarter, the company sold 4.3 million phones to customers. During both quarters, the company only sold 1.1 million BlackBerry 10 devices.
Chen also said he is giving himself two years to turn the company around. He plans to offset the declining revenue from handsets with sales from BlackBerry QNX among other forms of revenue. In the worst case scenario, Chen said he would have six to eight quarters to replace device sale declines with revenues from software and services.
