In an attempt to boost the sales of the mobile devices the company has reduced the price of its Android powered PRIV
Earlier this week, the Waterloo, Canada based firm announced that it has decided to slash the price of its first ever Google’s Android powered smartphone, dubbed as PRIV on the permanent basis. The decision was taken after the trend of weak sales of BlackBerry’s devices continued.
After having a price cut of around $50, the prestigious PRIV will now have a price of around $649. The price is still at the threshold of excessiveness but compared to other tech giants like Samsung and Apple, among others, the price is slightly lower.
But will the strategic change pull back the company from the vortex of sinking or is it already too late for the smartphone maker. The Waterloo, Ontario based organization’s CEO John Chen had expressed that the company is likely to consider suspending its hardware business if the current year couldn’t turn out to be fruitful for the company.
Earlier this month when the company released its financial reports, it declared substantially lower-than-expected sales of around 600,000 –against the expected figure of 850,000 –which raised a lot of questions about whether the company has the potential to perform better in its hardware business and the persistency to take the phone business beyond the current year.
Back in November when the company launched its first ever Android based smartphone then the management and the analysts had high hopes from the device and they anticipated that the handset is likely to turnaround the company’s performance.
BlackBerry is also shifting its focus on the services and software business and is looking forward to assist the business in adequate management of all the devices in order to shun down its high dependency on the phone sales which have been sinking down heavily in the recent years.
The disappointing sales have been a major problem for the smartphone maker for so long. Before launching its Android based phone the company relied heavily on its operating system –BlackBerry 10. However, the company couldn’t successfully persuade the business to take up its BB10 OS. The newly launched PRIV is curved screen and has a sleek slide-out keyboard.
The hardness fell on the BB10 powered phones when the most popular messaging and social networking apps WhatsApp and Facebook withdrew their support from the phones.
Additionally, during the earnings conference call that took place last week, the CEO expressed that, for this quarter, the firm has been planning to expand the distribution of PRIV to new carriers and countries. He also expressed that PRIV took longer period to finally come to Verizon’s network.
Chen further added that in order to turn the hardware unit back into profitable then the company ought to sell around 3 million devices a year. The CEO cited that he is confident that the BlackBerry can meet the said target.
At the market which closed on Wednesday, BlackBerry Ltd. stock stood at a price of $7.10.
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