John Chen, CEO of BlackBerry was in attendance at this year’s Code Conference. He had a number of things to say including why he became CEO, what chance BlackBerry has at surviving and the overall BlackBerry essence at this current moment of time.
To be brutally honest, John Chen said a bizarre thing. When questioned on why he became CEO of BlackBerry, he said:
“Am I the most qualified? No, I’m the only one they could find.”
When we live in a world where the media will eat up any negative BlackBerry news and run with it, this is something quite bold for a CEO of an underdog company to be saying. Rest assured, John Chen held his own whilst he was sat down. He used humour to the sceptical audience, flat out saying the company has a lot of troubles, but it is not dead.
He’s quite confident the company can survive, rating the chances for BlackBerry surviving as 80/20.
“I’m quite confident that we can save the patient” – John Chen
Things got quite interesting as he was asked quite straight forward about whether or not he was thinking of releasing an Android phone, he declined to comment. This is interesting for the most obvious reasons, he didn’t flat out say no, he just didn’t comment.
If there’s enough money on the table. I can’t comment on that right now
He also plans to release a device designed to appeal to telecommunication companies, but that’s all he had to say on the matter.
To top it off, you must know by now John Chen isn’t a “beat around the bush” kind of the guy, he understands the business, he isn’t emotionally tied to anything and he has the shareholders interest first, acknowledging that the handset business in which BlackBerry was once dominant in might not be much value to shareholders, but reiterating that the handset business is still important and valuable.
“I will be able to create a lot of value for our shareholder even without handset business, but I can create more with the handset business” – John Chen
He also emphasised that BlackBerry’s value right now is Security, plain and simple. He says:
If someone hacked your house … you might not be allowed to leave your house
He also talked about how he presumed there was parts of the company he didn’t think that were in bad shape until he took the role as CEO. Last but not least, something we already know is that BlackBerry will be going to back to its Enterprise roots and having a pop at The Internet of Things and creating handsets for consumers.