BlackBerry Venice aka Priv confirmed amid poor earnings report

Today BlackBerry was scheduled to announce their earnings report and it came as no surprise that the report was below expectations. While the whole world knows that BlackBerry is struggling right now, they’re more interested in what it’s going to do to get out of the rut: BlackBerry Venice. The Canadian company today confirmed that the BlackBerry Venice would be called the BlackBerry Priv and it will indeed use Android as its operating system.

The smartphone community that gathered around the sliding keyboard-touting BlackBerry Venice already knew that it would be the first smartphone from the company to run on Android, but official confirmation of that is finally here. The BlackBerry Venice will combine everything that is BlackBerry with the easy interface of Android, most likely Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

BlackBerry’s earnings report is not a happy one, as it is filled with losses. The company reported a 13 cent per share loss on revenue value of about $490 million, which is more than the 9 cent per share that analysts had predicted, according to Re/Code.

The BlackBerry Venice release date was confirmed for December by company CEO John Chen today, and he also went on to confirm that Android was chosen as the OS for the slider because it would allow access to more apps. Surely, those who were reticent of BlackBerry for this particular reason will rejoice upon hearing that, even though we knew about it a month ago already.

Details about the BlackBerry Venice aka Priv have not yet been revealed, as the company is still working on finishing touches on the phone. Apparently, the BlackBerry Priv price will be around $750 for the base model, which suggests that the company is positioning this phone as a direct iPhone 6S competitor. With its slide-out QWERTY keyboard, it might have a shot at that. We’ll be back once BlackBerry spills the beans about an event.