BlackBerry CEO John Chen is giving himself two years to make up for his company’s plummeting handset revenue.
Chen doesn’t plan to do away with handsets but he does plan to replace BlackBerry’s handset profits by focusing on software for connected verticals like automotive and health care, according to Bloomberg.
Part of Chen’s plan includes using QNX, which BlackBerry bought in 2010 as a platform for its BlackBerry 10 OS, and expanding its role in M2M applications.
BlackBerry closed out its fiscal 2014 with another round of red figures. But the outlook for the company looked cheerier as the adjusted eight cents per share it lost largely outperformed the losses of 56 cents per share the Street had predicted.
Chen earned cautious praise from analysts for how rapidly he was cutting costs at BlackBerry.
Chen, formerly CEO at Sybase, was brought in last year to help turnaround BlackBerry. Under former CEO Thorsten Heins the OEM attempted a high-profile comeback on the strength of new devices and BB10 but ultimately fell well short of sales expectations.