BlackBerry CEO John Chen Hints at Mid-Range Android Phone for 2016

Now, the company CEO John Chen has hinted that it may launch another Android smartphone next year which will be targeted at the mid-range segment. He however stressed that the company's focus will be "more towards" the high-end.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Chen elaborated when asked about plans for another Android phone, "Depends on the Priv. If the Priv is well received in the market and looks like it is. There's a good chance [...], we will still focus on the high-end probably closer to mid-range coming out in 2016."

On being asked about any timeline for launch, Chen cleared that this will completely depend on the Priv's performance in the coming months. Adding further, he confirmed that the BlackBerry Priv, which has been available in select markets since last month, will be hitting 31 more markets in the next three months.

To recall, the BlackBerry Priv, the company's first Android-based smartphone, went on sale in the first week of November in four markets.

The Canadian company may not have revealed any clear plans for a second Android phone but a new BlackBerry smartphone was in benchmark listings last month tipping that the company may be testing use of Samsung's Exynos chips in its devices. The BlackBerry smartphone codenamed STV100-1 was seen in GFXBench listings with Samsung's octa-core Exynos 7420 processor clocked at 2.1GHz. BlackBerry's purported second Android smartphone, believed to be codenamed "Vienna", was leaked in images last month.