"I personally love the keyboards," says BlackBerry CEO John Chen, elaborating on his plans to re-introduce the company's core feature into future smartphones, physical keyboards.
BlackBerry is not among the top players in the current smartphone race, but the company is determined to make a come-back by doing what it's best at. Recently appointed BlackBerry CEO John Cheng revealed at the 2014 International Consumer Electronic Show that the company will reinstate physical keyboards in its future smartphone models, as they fueled the company's early success.
"I personally love the keyboards," Chen said in an interview with Bloomberg at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Tuesday.
Chen, who succeeded former CEO Thorsten Heins in November, added that his company will direct its focus away from touch screen devices and introduce smartphones that will "predominantly" feature physical keyboards. The Canadian phone-maker's smartphones were a popular choice among corporate and government consumers for they offered a user-friendly design with real keyboards, this is before the market was overrun with smarter phones from Apple, Samsung, Nokia and others.
In order to stand by its future plans, BlackBerry announced a five-year deal with Foxconn Technology, last month. The long-term agreement will outsource the manufacturing and design of several devices to Foxconn Tech, which is the world's largest electronics contract manufacturer with customers like Apple and Google.
"Foxconn can be a really great partner, not only to eliminate my inventory risk, but also their ability to penetrate various different markets, call it the developing and emerging markets," Chen added in his interview with Bloomberg.
Chen also said that the newest alliance with Foxconn will bring the first smartphone with a touch-screen panel, but the future models will bring the old-school physical keyboard integration.
The company's plans will feed the sluggish sales of BlackBerry smartphones. BlackBerry wrote off $1 billion worth in unsold inventory of Z10, the company's first touch-screen smartphone.
