The CEO of Blackberry, John Chen, recently made it public in an interview with The National that the company plans to roll out to new mid range Android smart phones this year. However, he did not disclose any time frame related to the launch. This, according to the company should be the next big thing after Priv, which anyway did not have many takers. The only thing that was disclosed by the CEO regarding the two upcoming devices is that one of them will come with a full touch screen and the other will come with a QWERTY keyboard.
Chen also gave a rough idea regarding the pricing of the two units. HE mentioned that they will be priced in the range of US $ 300 to $ 400, which roughly means around INR 20,000 to 26,000. Keeping this data in mind, we can assume that the company is aiming at two mid range devices. No other specification regarding the devices were revealed by, either the company or Chen. He also spoke anout Blackberry Priv and discussed how it is a too high end product, which is why it has received a recent price cut. The device was listed on Amazon India earlier for INR 62,990 and is now listed at INR 57,990.
Talking about sales figures, Chen revealed that Blackberry sold around 600,000 handsets this year till end of March. Analysts had predicted that the company will sell around 850,000 handsets by that time, which means that the company has nothing positive to show regarding its sales figures. There is however no official word regarding the number of Priv units sold in the market. This could be because the device seemingly has more cons than pros, although the pros are definitely praiseworthy.
