Oh how the mighty have fallen. Years ago practically everyone had a BlackBerry device from the general consumer all the way to the state department. These days however, nobody has one. It’s definitely an understatement to say they missed the smartphone and tablet boat years ago and when the time came to right the ship, it was simply too little too late.
As such, it’s no surprise that BlackBerry CEO John Chen announced at their latest earnings call that BlackBerry will no longer develop hardware and instead outsource all hardware development to third parties.
BlackBerry will focus on providing state of the art, security and device software. BlackBerry will discontinue internal hardware development and fully outsource its function to the third-party. BlackBerry will receive royalty for unit.
While hardware development will cease, BlackBerry is still very much alive and kicking except their new strategy will focus on software which has recently become a large driver of BlackBerry’s revenue growth. According to its recent earnings report, software and service sales generated $156 million for the company, which represents about 44% of the company’s total $334 million total revenue. Additionally software and services is up 111% year over year and roughly 81% of revenue was recurring in nature. BlackBerry expects to software and services to grow 30% for the full fiscal year.
Source: BlackBerry
