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Blackberry Sold 850K Phones In 2017, Says “Mission Accomplished”

Latest numbers from IDC reveal BlackBerry sold a total of 850,000 smartphone units in 2017 – a notion two senior executives from BlackBerry/TCL affirm leave them “with a feeling of mission accomplished”.

By comparison, Google sold 3.9 Pixel Phones last year, and HMD Global sold 4.4 million Nokia branded phones in the fourth quarter of 2017 alone.

In 2016, Chinese-based TCL purchased the rights to sell under the BlackBerry name, leading the partnership to launch its first flagship smartphone, the KeyOne, at Mobile World Congress last year.

As reported by The Vergetwo senior members of the BlackBerry Mobile/TCL Team, Francois Mahieu and Alain Lejeune, claim its KeyOne smartphone launch was an “unqualified success”.

Both Mahieu and Lejeune affirm BlackBerry’s “channel presence” is currently more important than actual sales metrics.

As part of their partnership, TCL brought along several existing distributor network relationships – ones it hopes to marry with the BlackBerry brand.

At current, BlackBerry’s market visibility is a more important to the company than actual sales, leading Mahieu to say he’s entering 2018 with a “with a feeling of mission accomplished”.

As reported to cnetBlackBerry intends to capture between 3% – 5% of the premium smartphone market over the next few years:

“I would not be satisfied with market share in premium (phones) that is sub-1 percent forever”.

According to CounterPoint Research, in order for BlackBerry to reach that goal, the company needs to sell around 10 million units per year.

TCL has announced its plans to unveil two new BlackBerry phones in 2018.



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