BlackBerry has made a comeback as a software solutions company focused on security under the leadership of CEO John Chen. The company reported revenue of $249 million in the second quarter of 2017. The surge was led by record software revenue, which came in at $996 million — a year-over-year (YoY) increase of 26 per cent, TechCrunch reported late on Thursday. BlackBerry suffered a major fall as it struggled to adapt to the smartphone revolution. In 2009, the company controlled the smartphone market with 41.6 per cent share.
However, Apple and Samsung took over a larger share of the market and in 2013, when CEO Chen joined the company, Blackberry had roughly three per cent share of the smartphone market. BlackBerry has has now redefined itself as a software company and it does not makes its own phones.
The company outsourced manufacturing to China’s TCL to manufacture and sell BlackBerry branded phones in December 2016 and also embraced Android platform. Optiemus Infracom owns the rights to make and sell BlackBerry smartphones in countries such as India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. BlackBerry “Priv”, “DTEK60” and recently-launched “KEYOne” all run on Android OS. “KEYOne” comes with both touch-screen and old-school physical QWERTY keyboard.
