Following BlackBerry's PRIV's sold out success on Wal-Mart stores this week, the company's stocks increased more than 11 percent. While BlackBerry's first-ever Android smartphone PRIV was able to attract the market, it's still uncertain if the phones can truly support the company's growth.
Amid the competitive environment of the smartphone industry, BlackBerry struggled from technical failure. But with PRIV, the company has found a ray of hope, making investors excited as the device marked the first step of its success, Bidness Etc noted.
Since BlackBerry has also been working to expand its market to retailers throughout the United States and Canada, the company rolled out PRIV, which its shipping started in early November, to Singapore, the Philippines and Malaysia, Yahoo! Finance reported. BlackBerry is also working to transition its business to selling software as revenue from phone sales continues to fall.
With BlackBerry's latest smartphone PRIV, however, which was unveiled last month and sold in the United States through AT&T Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Wal-Mart and the company's own website, BlackBerry's stocks jumped the most since January. Since the android smartphone is currently sold out, it resulted to stocks upsurge of 11 percent to $8.15.
In the most recent quarter, smartphone sales dropped more than 50 percent to $201 million compared with the same period last year. Thus, BlackBerry Chief Executive Officer John Chen has repeatedly threatened to quit if the device business fails to be profitable and needs to sell 5 million phones a year for the unit to break even. Chen has also said the company is already eyeing more acquisitions in software technology in a bid to reach $500 million in software revenue. According to Bloomberg Business, the company will report earnings on Dec. 18.
Meanwhile, just to give some insights about BlackBerry's PRIV, it is the company's first device to run on Google Inc.'s Android operating system, which increases its appeal to customers who demand popular smartphone applications that aren't available on BlackBerry's own system. Following tradition, PRIV retained Blackberry's signature qwerty keyboard on a slide out panel. The device also includes a 5.4-inch screen, 18-megapixel camera, 3410 mAh battery and 32GB of storage. The phone was listed at a retail price of $699.99, Wireless Week has learned.
The BlackBerry PRIV is also a risky and costly venture as well as superbly equipped and tightly secured. Additionally, PRIV also looks strikingly similar to a highly customized car.
"It is almost as if BlackBerry walked into the dealership and ticked every possible box, even some that are barely compatible, and then went on to request a completely different engine," GSMarena said on their review of the smartphone. "And if that wasn't enough, BlackBerry then took it upon itself to fit its own security protocols so that the level of communication privacy matches its own high standards.
While BlackBerry's PRIV will end up mostly in executive hands and a small group of loyal BlackBerry fans, the smartphone stands for both privilege and privacy, making it the core business of the company.
