John Chen, CEO of BlackBerry, has said that the company will not stay in the devices business if it is unable to turn a profit, as it sees falling sales for its smartphone line.

According to Reuters, the executive noted: “”If I cannot make money on handsets, I will not be in the handset business.”

  • Chen subsequently took to BlackBerry’s blog to argue that his comments had been “taken out of context” – see our update here.

In its most recent quarter, BlackBerry recognised hardware revenue on just 1.3 million smartphones, as the company has struggled to generate traction for devices powered by its latest BlackBerry 10 platform.

As part of a move to bolster its devices unit, BlackBerry last year announced a partnership with contract manufacturer Foxconn, to deliver devices targeting fast-growing markets such as Indonesia.

The company also has a smartphone in the works that is intended to recapture the spirit of the BlackBerry devices from its heyday (Q20), which it hopes will improve its position with enterprise customers.

Should BlackBerry decide to exit the market, it will leave it as a focused enterprise mobile device management (MDM) player (although it also owns the QNX embedded software business).

While MDM has played a significant role in BlackBerry’s history, this has generally been part-and-parcel of its devices activity, where it has sold end-to-end systems into the enterprise.

With Android and iOS gaining traction in the marketplace, the company will become little more than another player in this segment, which is not short of established competitors already – many of which already have relationships with customers.

In a recent interview with Mobile World Live, John Sims, president of Global Enterprise Services at BlackBerry, noted that the company is looking to serve markets where security is an important consideration, such as healthcare and financial services – playing to another of BlackBerry’s perceived strengths.

Interestingly, the Reuters report said that Chen had noted that the company “will do some partnerships and we will probably, potentially do an M&A on security”.