BlackBerry to continue shift to software section

We’ve said this in the past about BlackBerry and the man we often call the potential architect of its recovery, CEO John Chen – Rome wasn’t built in a day. It’s a long, arduous trek back up for the troubled Waterloo firm, which just announced 200 layoffs in Canada and Florida, and keeps losing more of whatever tiny market share it has remaining in the smartphone space, even with the recent release of the Android-powered Priv.

In the September ending quarter of 2015, BlackBerry had a mere 0.3 percent of the global smartphone market, according to statistics from Gartner. Let that soak in for a moment – 0.3 percent globally, meaning the company has long lost its appeal in what used to be its strongest markets in Southeast Asia and other parts of the continent. With the Priv released last year, and another Android phone rumored for 2016, BlackBerry appears to have given up on its home brews, meaning its BlackBerry operating system. Still, the company sees a lot of opportunity in the business security software space, which remains its only feasible option at this point in the game. This area, after all, is proving far more lucrative than BlackBerry-powered handsets, or handsets of any kind, currently are.

Still, there have been some rumors firing up about a second Android phone from BlackBerry. The rumors only hint that such a phone may be arriving this year, but we hardly know anything about its fundamentals and its key features. But we’re guessing it may take off where the Priv left off, meaning we can expect slightly improved specs from the Priv’s 5.4-inch QHD display, 18-megapixel rear camera, and 22 hours of mixed battery life, and maybe a similar slide-out keyboard design and focus on security and productivity-related software features.