BlackBerry CEO John Chen: I'm Determined To Make Software As A Business

BlackBerry Ltd BBRY unveiled its latest smartphone Leap at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The company's CEO John Chen was interviewed by Bloomberg at the event. In the interview, Chen discussed how he is trying to make software as BlackBerry's new major business and the surprises he has had in his journey of turning around BlackBerry.

Software As A Business
"The company has been around for 30 years," Chen said. "We've done a lot of thing about mobile computing. Security, encryption, privacy, cyberware and all that are all good stuff I mean that we do. Lots of patents supporting it like 45,000 patents. We think it's time to be able to put it on other devices to expand our business."

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"So I'm determined to make software as a business. This is a little bit different from the past. And I also want to make sure that everything is agnostic. Because if you look at a BlackBerry base, it's niche, it's limited. And I wanted to be able to serve the entire spectrum, all 100 percent of the market."

He continued, "So we were fortunate to have a good partner in Samsung, announced a relationship with them in November of last year. So they are our server, able to manage the Knox device. Just couple days ago where they announced the S6, we able to add a couple of security software application onto it. So it is a very meaningful thing for us. I think the market is going to like it. It's going to be broad."

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Stabilization Of Revenue
Chen was asked that in his tenure of 15 months as the person responsible for turning around BlackBerry, what has surprised him so far. He replied, "Been doing well. So you know I have always said that the beginning year it's going to focus on financial well-being. We did that. We're at least generating a little of cash. Makes a very, very small profit. But that's a big change from a couple years ago."

"Now we have a roadmap we're executing. We're delivering phones; we're delivering software. We're stepping up our investment in encryption and security and privacy. And we're releasing even more phones. So we're getting to the point that we're going to stabilize our revenue," Chen concluded.