Once dominant smartphone company BlackBerry Ltd might finally bid goodbye to the smartphone business in 2016 and focus its attention on something more profitable if sales of its devices continue to plunge, according to the company's CEO John Chen, who revealed this at the Code/Mobile conference in California on Thursday.

Chen says his company would stop making handsets after launching the Android-powered BlackBerry Priv if they don't make a healthy profit and could even abandon its BlackBerry 10 operating system entirely.

The new BlackBerry Priv slider smartphone would be the Canadian phone maker's last bet to make sure it stays in the handset business. Previous phones from the company did not perform well as it expected. For example, BlackBerry only sold 8,000 Classic and Passpost phones in the first half of 2015.Worse than poor when compared to sales figures of the iPhone handsets from rival Apple Inc.If sales of the Priv smartphone falls through, it is game over for the company.

BlackBerry reportedly disclosed to +The Verge that it needs to sell as much as 5 million smartphones a year to reconsider staying in the business.It will take a lot from BlackBerry to reach that number before the whole of 2016 runs out.

Credit:http://www.wearobo.com/2015/10/blackberry-may-stop-producing-phones.html#sthash.FRa6vcPG.dpuf

cc lalasticala

They need new marketing strategy.

They should outsource some from the Apple guys

Have been waiting for so long to hear this story.... Android all the way

Just a couple of yrs ago, they were the real deal, and many were ready to spend and sacrifice stuffs for it. Fastforward 2015, and they're considering quitting. Lol.

I dislike the phone anyway, right from its glory days. They should just quit and stop thinking or planing to quit. No one would miss them