BlackBerry CEO skeptical about foldable smartphones

Foldable smartphones introduced at the 2019 Mobile World Congress and days prior to that, namely the Huawei Mate X and Samsung Galaxy Fold, have managed to impress a large portion of the audience. However, BlackBerry CEO John Chen is not only not impressed about foldables, but is outright skeptical.

Talking to Barron’s in a recent interview, Chen said he wanted “something faster with functional upgrades“. He said there “are no breakthroughs on the horizon. We’ve done fingerprints. We’ve done facial recognition. We’ve done iris technology“. While Chen acknowledged the need for larger screens, he also said that these smartphones are becoming bulky.

I wouldn’t let anyone outside of lab testing at my company buy (a foldable) — John Chen

BlackBerry stopped producing smartphones in 2016, when they licensed the brand to TCL. BlackBerry phones are still available on the market, but they’re manufactured under the TCL umbrella. The original BlackBerry brand is now dealing with security and communications software and services mainly.