Although Blackberry has been getting considerable press in technology circles lately thanks to their new Android-based smartphone, the PRIV, the company continues to flounder around thanks to lackluster hardware sales. In an interview today Blackberry CEO John Chen indicated the company plans to make more acquisitions and focus on software in the near future as a way to turn things around.
Chen indicated that the key target to Blackberry's acquisition activity is to reach $500 million in software revenue by March 2016. He noted that the company has over $3 billion in available cash and is “pouring most of that into research and development.” This in-house work comes in addition to five acquisitions the company has completed over the last 20 months. The most recent addition was Good Technology Corp., acquired in September, which builds applications for employees to better use their smartphones in a secure fashion.
Chen says, “if we don't get a good hardware business going, we will more consider the software side.” Blackberry lost their position as number one in the market back in 2007 and has been on a slide ever since. Even the PRIV, while generating some buzz as the company's first Android phone and re-introducing a physical keyboard, is not receiving glowing reviews and thus far only AT&T has agreed to sell the device.
source: Bloomberg
