BlackBerry Phone Sales Fall Short of Expectation

By Daniel Lee - 02 Apr '16 01:03AM

Things are getting worse for BlackBerry and the company seems to never recover downfall that happened since Apple's iPhone was released.

Blackberry (BBRY - Get Report) stock kept decreasing, down 7.11% to $7.51 on big trading volume Friday, after the company reported decreased revenue during the 2016 fourth quarter.

Blackberry merely sold 600,000 units of its smartphones over the three-month period. The 600,000 unit sales are lowered than Wall Street’s expectations, which predicted that BlackBerry would at least sell 850,000 units for the quarter.

Chief Executive John Chen told "The softness at the high end of the smartphone market is certainly a headwind, but the main issue that we face and that we need to address is the distribution," said Chen on a call with CNBC.

In order to break even the company still needs to sell at least 3 million units of its smartphones in 2016 which doesn't seem so realistic at this point of time.

Blackberry made a net loss of $238 million, or 45 cents a share. That compared with year ago profit of $28 million, or 5 cents a share.

Chen also said BlackBerry is planning to launch a new mid-range Android-based device before September, and that the company plans to do a better job targeting enterprise clients with its new devices.

BlackBerry noted it had a $192 million pretax charge related to restructuring and acquisition costs.