BlackBerry to release two Android-powered smartphones this year; Marshmallow update for Priv in Q1 2016

While smartphones are not exactly the highlight of the ongoing CES 2016, the last company we would expect to be present was BlackBerry. CEO, John Chen however did have some announcements to make and it did turn out to be something big. In an interview with CNet Chen hinted that BlackBerry would only be launching two smartphones in the coming year and both of them will be powered by Google’s Android. Chen also hinted that its recently released Priv smartphone was actually selling well, “so far, so good,” Chen said. “I’m taking a cautiously optimistic view.” For now just one smartphone has been confirmed for launch in 2016, but there is a second product in the pipeline that is also expected to be powered by the Android operating system. However, there is no clear indicator whether BlackBerry would ditch BlackBerry OS 10 entirely, but from the look of things, the company’s last attempt at building smartphones, does seem to be working out, now that they are powered by Android with a complete ecosystem of apps and services, many of which come from Google. The news about launching more Android smartphones however isn’t new as BlackBerry’s Nader Henein had confirmed the same earlier in a conversation with Htxt.africa back in November 2015. The Priv smartphone was indeed a bold move by BlackBerry, but for now it is hard to tell whether it is a success or not. This is because the smartphone has so far only been released in US, Canada and the UK and all of them have been pushed out via carriers, so adoption is a bit limited. In other software-related news, BlackBerry executive, Ron Louks told CrackBerry that the BlackBerry Priv’s Android 6.0 Marshmallow update is coming. But owners will have to do a bit of waiting as the company plans to roll out the same somewhere in the Q1 2016. So for now, the release seems to be pretty far away.