BlackBerry says no plans to exit the handset business

BlackBerry Ltd has no plans to shut down its loss-making handset business, incoming interim Chief Executive John Chen said on Monday, adding that the smartphone maker has sufficient resources to stage a turnaround.

"I know we have enough ingredients to build a long-term sustainable business," Chen said in a telephone interview with Reuters. "I have done this before and seen the same movie before."

Chen, who is replacing Thorsten Heins as CEO, performed a similar turnaround in the late 1990s at Sybase, an enterprise software and services company that was eventually acquired by SAP AG in 2010.

A year ago, private equity firm Silver Lake named Chen as one of its senior advisors. Silver Lake recently partnered with Michael Dell to take PC maker Dell Inc private.

Chen said his involvement with BlackBerry has nothing to do with his ties to Silver Lake. He also declined to comment on whether he plans to pursue licensing deals for the new BlackBerry 10 operating system with Dell or other partners.

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