Why is BlackBerry still making smartphones? CEO John Chen explains

We might have forgotten the once-popular BlackBerry devices, those mobile phones which brought the ease of a QWERTY keyboard into the palms of users with robust security. We might also question the existence of the money-losing company, but its optimistic CEO John Chen believes otherwise.

With extremely tough competition faced by rivals Apple and Samsung, BlackBerry's global smartphone market share has gone down close to 0 percent and the company was able to sell only 1.6 million phones in the last quarter as compared to 61.2 million iPhones sold by Apple.

These figures only suggest a crippling company. However, Chen has a different opinion. In his interview with Business Insider, he said that he will make BlackBerry's smartphone business profitable again. He stressed that BlackBerry phones are the entry point for customers into the company's security business.

He further explained that BlackBerry can provide a secure backbone for other devices like iPhones and Android phones, but can't make them as secure as a BlackBerry device.

Citing an example of the US Army, Chen said that they still use BlackBerry and if he closes down smartphone manufacturing, he will lose that account. The challenge here for BlackBerry is to make phones profitable at the volume the select people represent as there are a lot of important customers, including the military, government, and certain big companies, who need that level of security only BlackBerry devices offer.

Under his leadership about 18 months ago, BlackBerry has refocused toward enterprise and governments instead of normal consumers. However, bringing the sinking company back to life is going to be tough, especially when even China-based smartphone manufacturers are successfully wooing smartphone lovers worldwide and Chen believes coupling nice phones with a promise of security is a big piece of the puzzle.