BlackBerry CEO says company may create another tablet

BlackBerry CEO says company may create another tablet

The company's last foray into the tablet market didn't go so well in 2011, when the Playbook was critically panned and suffered poor sales.

Is BlackBerry looking to dive back into the tablet market? CEO John Chen said that he’s looking for an opportunity to do just that.

During an interview at the Mobile World Congress, Chen said a new tablet isn’t in the works, but the company is thinking about taking another shot — but it would have to be something special, he said according to a CNET report.

BlackBerry has been struggling to grab the market share it once enjoyed just a few years ago before smartphones left BlackBerrys in the dust. The company has less than 1 percent of market share, meaning it is looking for innovative ways to make itself relevant again. They’ve tried a smartphone with a touchscreen that has a slide-out keyboard. They’ve unveiled the wider BlackBerry Passport, which has a square screen. A tablet effort would be the second attempt by the company to tackle that market, which didn’t go so well the first time as the BlackBerry Playbook was met with bad reviews when it was released in 2011.

The tablet market has finally hit some bumps in the road, unfortunately for BlackBerry, with iPad sales declining and worldwide shipments of tablets falling 3.2 percent in the last quarter of 2014, according to CNET.

The company has a full docket for 2015, with plans to release a slider BlackBerry and a touchscreen device known as Leap, meaning that it doesn’t have time right now to push out a tablet.

However, the company has begun reaching out to manufacturers to see what is possible and what it would take to get a tablet to stand out. Chen said he wants any offering to be “iconic,” rather than simply “bringing a tablet out for a tablet’s sake.”

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