Blackberry's John Chen On The Company Returning To Profitability After Many Quarters

BlackBerry Ltd BBRY came out with better than expected early on Friday. The company posted profits after a long time, declaring earnings of $28 million compared to a loss of $423 million in the same quarter last year.

Blackberry's CEO, John Chen, was recently on CNBC to weigh in on the numbers and to discuss which handsets are doing better in the market.

The Highlights

"The best [one] is one of the highlights," Chen said. "It's the only reason why we could grow software at 24 percent sequentially from Q3 to Q4 and 20 percent year over year. So, we are doing well it pretty well and [best for] lots for our customers. I gave a list at our earnings call about our major customers. About 4, 5 or 6 of them are financials. So, we are doing well all around [...]"

Too Early In Rolling Out Stage

On which handsets of the company are doing relatively well. Chen said, "Right now we are selling Classic about two, every two Classic over one Passport. So, Passport serves certain segment of the market, but Classic [has a] little bit of a wide appeal and it's just too early especially the Classic."

"If you follow our progress in that, the AT&T stores start carrying it at the end of February which is our end of quarter and Verizon carries it at the beginning of March. So, it's actually technically not in the last quarter."

"So, we now have about 7,000 stores round the world, 68 countries, lots of carriers adopting the Classic. We are launching most recently in Indonesia, with the Classic. So, it is too early in the rolling out stage," Chen concluded.