Blackberry will launch two mid-range Android handsets this year, chief executive John Chen has said.<\/p>\n
One will have a physical keyboard, the other a full touch-screen.<\/p>\n
Blackberry has no plans to develop handsets for its own operating system, BB10, but will continue to issue updates for existing devices.<\/p>\n
Its sales fell by almost $200m in the three months to the end of February. Mr Chen said its first Android device, the Priv, had been too expensive.<\/p>\n
“The fact that we came out with a high-end phone was probably not as wise as it should have been,” he told United Arab Emirates news website the National.<\/p>\n
Blackberry chief executive John Chen said one of the new devices would have a physical keyboard.<\/p>\n
“A lot of enterprise customers have said to us, ‘I want to buy your phone, but $700 [\u00a3491] is a little too steep for me. I’m more interested in a $400 device.'”<\/p>\n
Mr Chen had previously blamed the company’s poor sales figures on delays in negotiations with mobile networks about its Priv handset.<\/p>\n
Last month, Facebook and its Whatsapp messaging service announced they were to stop supporting their Blackberry apps.<\/p>\n
Blackberry said it was “extremely disappointed” by the decision.<\/p>\n
“If Blackberry is determined to remain in the hardware business, the decision to offer new devices with mid-range pricing is a sensible move,” said analyst Ben Wood from CCS Insight.<\/p>\n
“We believe there is an opportunity with business users who don’t want the expense of giving iPhones to their employees and want a robust, affordable and secure Android smartphone tailored to business use.”<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Blackberry will launch two mid-range Android handsets this year, chief executive John Chen has said. One will have a physical keyboard, the other a full touch-screen. Blackberry has no plans to develop handsets for its own operating system, BB10, but will continue to issue updates for existing devices. Its sales fell by almost $200m in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":205971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=205959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=205959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=205959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=205959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}