BlackBerry CEO John Chen dismisses Android switch as premature talk

The last few days have been pretty hectic for smartphone manufacturer BlackBerry. The company, after abandoning the idea of selling itself, chose to replace its CEO Thorsten Heins and raise around $1 billion from institutional investors, including its largest shareholder. While the company’s leadership may have realised that privatisation was not the right way to go, there are still a lot of questions being asked about the company’s future.

Addressing some of them, the interim chief executive, John Chen, in an interview with CrackBerry, has clearly said that “BlackBerry is an iconic company. I do not want it to be sold at an artificially low price.” Chen, however, is not planning to make any decisions just yet without taking the time to consider the repercussions. And one of the most important decisions on the list may be a possible switch from BlackBerry 10 to another operating system, with a possible candidate being Google’s Android.

New BlackBerry CEO says an OS switch is premature talk

During the interview, the BlackBerry head honcho said that it was inappropriate for him to comment on a possible switch to Android, given that he has been on the job for only a day so far. While talking about this, he said, “I think just jumping to an Android without a thought through of why BlackBerry needs to be around and what makes us relevant and all that, before I answer that question, jumping to anything is inappropriate.”

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While talking about the ‘interim’ part of his job description, Chen said that “The interim CEO title is because I need to take a look at the management team and try to figure out our business strategy. My job is really to figure and focus on all the strategic things that the company is facing immediately, today, and also in the longer term – three, five years out. On a day-to-day basis, I eventually will need a good solid CEO”. 

So who is on Chen’s mind? He says the company is looking for a software person who understands servicing, sales and marketing. The executive also said that it was too early to comment on whether the company would be moving out of the handset business. While talking about this, Chen said, “What is BlackBerry without the device? The question is, can we do more in that? It’s not about let’s not do this and do that. Sometimes it’s not business sensible to make those statements.”