The BlackBerry Priv did so badly that Blackberry refused to say how many it has flogged during its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings call last week.

BlackBerry CEO John Chen said the Priv was "too expensive", and that the firm will instead focus on the mid-range market this year with the launch of two affordable Android handsets. Coming out with a high-end phone as our first Android device was pretty dumb, he said.

"A lot of enterprise customers have said to us: 'I want to buy your phone but $700 is a little too steep for me. I'm more interested in a $400 device,'" he said,

One of the cheap phones will have a keyboard and the other will be fully touchscreen. There will be no BB10-powered hardware, although the company might work on the software.

Chen admitted that BlackBerry will be forced to exit the hardware business if more money doesn't start to roll in soon.

"Since I started at the company [2013] I’ve been saying I’ll make the handset business profitable. If I can’t make it profitable because the market won’t let me, I’ll get out of the handset business. I love our handset business, but we need to make money," he said.