In 2015, BlackBerry finally made good on making a smartphone that ran Android, the BlackBerry Priv, and it appears the Canadian company is quietly optomistic about its future with Android. So much so that BlackBerry CEO John Chen confirmed at CES 2016 that more Android-powered BlackBerry smartphones are coming in 2016 – at least one, if not a second, if things are going well. As for why the Priv was released so sparsely – in the US it was only available through AT&T – Chen said that he didn’t have the resources to release the Priv to all carriers. Instead, BlackBerry agreed upon a 60-day exclusivity deal with AT&T, and has presumably been able to ramp up production in those two months with availability now extending to T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon.
Chen’s comments essentially suggest that BlackBerry’s homegrown operating system, BlackBerry 10, is going to be abandoned in 2016, and while Chen never explicitly said that would decommission it completely, it’s definitely not a vote of confidence. The main reason for this is that Chen sees the Priv as helping to “repair” BlackBerry’s reputation in the tech industry which has taken a beating when it comes to phone hardware. We can’t vouch for everyone else’s opinion, but from our perspective, BlackBerry is well on its way to redemption.
What do you think about more Android-powered BlackBerry smartphones? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: CNET via TalkAndroid
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