BlackBerry CEO John Chen has announced in a not-too-surprising statement that he is willing to axe BlackBerry's hardware division, if things don't start looking up for the company's profits.
According to a statement that he made at Code/Mobile, and relayed originally by Engadget, he announced that he will "Never say never" to shutting down BlackBerry's hardware business.
This might not happen, but Mr Chen did say that he might be willing to axe the hardware side of the business as early as 2016.
For some die-hard BlackBerry fans, this will be a massive blow. The BlackBerry Passport is a year old, but was well-received by users, and the BlackBerry PRIV is not only hotly anticipated, but could even drive the ailing platform into a positive new era.
These two devices are still, unfortunately, not enough to make the world ditch Apple and Android.
Mr Chen had said that alongside the BlackBerry PRIV, there could be two additional BB10 devices forthcoming from the company, though these are still totally unconfirmed.
My thoughts remain the same as they did late last month: The BlackBerry PRIV is likely to be a very expensive device. Whilst Joe Public regard the PRIV to be a primarily Android device, it is not quite that - It's a BlackBerry that will run Android apps. Everything does point towards the PRIV running Android v5.1.1 (Lollipop), whether it will compare to current Droids in real world use has still to be seen.
Personally, I hope that BlackBerry don't choose to have too much of their OS planted inside this phone. The world will be happy with a high end Android slider with a decent hardware keyboard.
But, in this form, can it really be called a BlackBerry?
I'm sure that BlackBerry do produce the best hardware keyboards for mobiles, and maybe this could be sold off/farmed out, but I think that BlackBerry would have to churn out some pretty spectacular mobiles - at lower prices - to be able to make any headway in the tightly-fought Android mobile market.
The PRIV, plus two other BB10 devices isn't going to turn BlackBerry around.
To be fair, even BB10 didn't manage to turn BlackBerry around: The older BB10 devices were and are expensive for what they are, and BB10 was found to be much more data hungry - Something that long standing BlackBerry fans suddenly had to contend with after years of running a data-frugal operating system.
Much like the BlackBerry Passport, the PRIV is an interestingly designed device; maybe feature phones could pull off these radical forms, but high-end, high price devices will struggle.
BlackBerry looks like they are doing too little, too late.
