BlackBerry CEO Says Priv Has Been Well-Received, Expected To Launch In 31 Countries By February 2016

Canadian tech giant BlackBerry reported a “$0.03 per share” net loss in the third quarter of 2015, beating the Wall Street estimates of a “$0.14 per share loss.” The overall revenues gained by BlackBerry also topped the expectations of $489.04 million by posting a good $557 million, according to 24/7 Wall St. Revenues apart, the question lingering in everybody’s mind is – Did the BlackBerry Priv do well in Q3?

Blackberry took a huge risk by abandoning the BlackBerry 10 OS for Google’s Android OS via the one-of-a-kind Priv. To top it off, the company opted to bring the retro-styled slider physical QWERTY keyboard back to the fore.

Needless to say, the interest surrounding the BlackBerry Priv was sky high across the globe. The company started selling this device in selected regions, including the U.S. and Canada, from November onwards. The Priv will make its way to 31 countries by February 2016, according to BlackBerry CEO John S. Chen.

Even though BlackBerry did not reveal the exact numbers of the shipped Priv smartphones, the company apparently sold a total of 700,000 units in the third quarter, with an average price of $315. The Priv retails at $699 in the U.S. and the average price of devices sold last year in the same time period was $240. Looking at the sizeable improvement in the average price, it’s safe to assume that, Priv had a huge role to play in the overall 700,000 sold units, Digital Trends reported.

However, this number is reportedly lower than the Wall Street expectations with regard to sales figure. Not long ago, Chen told BlackBerry needs to sell 5 million handsets per year to break even in the hardware department, according to Financial Post.

Furthermore, Reuters reported that the overall hardware sales totaled $214 million in the third quarter of this year. Although, BlackBerry’s year-over-year sales figure is relatively down, the Q3 sales number is better than the figure tallied in Q2 with $201 million.

Financial Post, meanwhile, said that better sales and earnings per share, combined with a narrower loss, made the investors happy and following which, BlackBerry shares apparently rose 9.7 percent in Toronto to $11.95, on the day of announcement. Closer to home, the share rose 11 percent to $8.61 in New York.

In general, BlackBerry has made phenomenal improvements in the software and services domain. This unit posted revenues of $162 million specific to this quarter, which has grown 183 percent from 2014 and 119 percent from Q2 2015. Not to forget, BlackBerry recently acquired AtHoc and Good Technologies, which also helped in securing the overall results.