BlackBerry CEO says most new phones will have keyboards

New management, new goals. BlackBerry's short flirtation with touchscreen-only phones will be taking a step back as new CEO John Chen says BlackBerry's new phones will "predominantly" have physical keyboards.

BlackBerry will be returning to the core audience it was famous for – corporate and government employees, who need – and prefer – a quality physical keyboard. BlackBerry's touch-only phones didn’t do so hot (bringing an eye-watering loss of $1 billion), so it's understandable for the new CEO to want to return the company to what made it great in the first place.

Not that the QWERTY-packing Q10 and Q5 sent customers into a buying frenzy, but Chen has a solution for that too. First, Ron Louks, former exec at Sony Ericsson and HTC, will run the device business. In an interview with Bloomberg Chen said:

“Ron’s a very creative guy. I think he’s more in touch with not only the technology and design to make a phone great but how people like the phone.”

Second, Foxconn will take over some of the manufacturing to help produce phones for what Chen calls "developing and emerging markets". It's expected that the first phone to come out of Foxconn will be a touchscreen-only device.

Another recent move is the departure of Global creative director Alicia Keys.

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