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3:00 PM – We recently reported to you that BlackBerry has inked a deal with Foxconn to design and manufacture future BlackBerry devices. The company is exiting the high-end smartphone market due to poor sales of the Z10 and Q10 phones. The BlackBerry Z30 will most likely be the last smartphone people will see in the mass market. According to a spotting by The Wall Street Journal in BlackBerry’s recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week, the company decided to cancel two new smartphones that it planned to release during 2014.
Sources close to The Journal say that the two cancelled devices “were internally code-named Café and Kopi, and were low-cost phones aimed at emerging markets.” Since the company has inked a deal with Foxconn, it will stop worrying about its hardware division and focus more on what the company can actually profit in. CEO John Chen has been hard at work to re-structure the company with new faces in high-level management positions.
Sales of the Z10 and Q10 have been so poor that it forced BlackBerry’s hand to write down around $2.6 billion in unsold inventory so far. Even though the company cancelled two low-end devices, it is still currently developing two high-end enterprise devices codenamed Ontario and Windermere.
BlackBerry’s future in the high-end smartphone market is dark, however that doesn’t mean it may not return in the future. For now, the company needs to focus on getting its finances straight and becoming profitable again. With current $3.2 billion cash in hand, there is a lot the company can do.
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