How many PRIV did BlackBerry sell?
by Volker Weber
When you activate a new BlackBerry PRIV it goes to the Google Play Store and updates lots of pre-installed apps. You can find all of them (and some more) by searching the Play Store. When you look for BlackBerry Launcher, BlackBerry Hub, or Notes and Tasks, you will find they have been installed on 50,000+ devices. When you look for BlackBerry Keyboard and BlackBerry Services, you will find 100,000+ downloads. This just changed from last week, when they still reported 50,000+.
Just by looking at this data, I assume that BlackBerry sold and activated almost 100,000 PRIV devices, at best. It is their only Android device. And since the keyboard is so excellent, there are some Android users who sideload the keyboard into their smartphones without actually having a device from BlackBerry. You need the keyboard app as well as the Services framework.
The store only counts per device, not per download. Updates don't count after you initially loaded the app once from the store. At least that is how I understand it.
Sidenote:
There is one interesting download that does not happen automatically: the MicrosoftexFAT for BlackBerry driver (10,000 to 50,000 downloads). It enables all PRIVs to read/write SDXC cards with files larger than 4 GB. It's not included, since you have to pay Microsoft a license fee. I wish other vendors would make this capability available, especially Lenovo.
