Skip Navigation
BlackBerry Blog

A Really Great Day: PRIV Now Available in U.S and Canada

It was a Good day earlier this week. Today is a Great day. We’re making our new PRIV secure smartphone available through key partners in the U.S. and Canada. In the U.S., AT&T is offering PRIV through retail stores and online to consumers. In Canada, you can purchase our first-ever BlackBerry smartphone powered by Android starting today from Rogers, Bell,Telus, WIND, and Sasktel. And in the UK, both Carphone Warehouse and Selfridges will soon make PRIV available. You can also order PRIV from our own ShopBlackBerry.

Congratulations and many thanks to our partners that are making PRIV available today. Based on early feedback, we think customers will be intrigued by PRIV’s powerful productivity features, including the slide-out physical keyboard, 5.4-inch dual-curved screen and full-day battery life; wowed by the elegant, slim design; and reassured by advanced privacy features such as DTEK.

It goes without saying that the Android-powered PRIV also brings incredible new features to the platform and gives you full access to over one million applications, including Instagram, Spotify, Uber and BBM. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor will also let you run those apps at blazing speeds.

Today is only the first of many Great days, and many of our other carrier and retail partners will soon begin offering PRIV in more markets, including Germany, Hong Kong and the Netherlands.

Since our founding in 1984, security and privacy has been in our DNA. However, today more than ever, it informs every solution we acquire or bring to market, from PRIV and BES12 to WatchDox to AtHoc to Good Technology. Security and privacy are privileges. They should be protected. I encourage you to make the wise choice.

John Chen

About John Chen

John Chen is Executive Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of BlackBerry. Appointed in November 2013, John led BlackBerry’s turnaround stabilizing the company’s financial position, ensuring its viability, and pivoting its operations from consumer hardware to enterprise software. Today the company takes advantage of the current growth opportunities in IoT and Cybersecurity and is pioneering the convergence of these two markets.

John is a distinguished business leader and proven turnaround executive with over 40 years of engineering and management experience. Prior to joining BlackBerry, John served as Chairman and CEO of Sybase Inc. where he re-invented the company and achieved 55 consecutive quarters of profitability during his 15-year tenure.

Recognized as a thought leader and as a respected voice in foreign policy, John has testified before Congress on U.S.–China trade relations and was appointed by U.S. President George W. Bush to serve on the President's Export Council. In 2006, he was appointed co-chair of the Secure Borders and Open Doors Advisory Committee. Additionally, John chaired the U.S.-China Policy Advisory Roundtable for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), served on the Board of the National Committee on U.S. China Relations since 2012, and has been a member of the Committee of 100 since 1997 and its Chairman from 2009-2011.

John graduated magna cum laude from Brown University with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and a master's in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). John has an honorary professorship from Shanghai University, and honorary doctorates from San Jose State University, City University of Hong Kong, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. John has received awards from the U.S.-Asia Institute, the U.S.-China Policy Foundation, the California-Asia Business Council, and the U.S.-Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce Education Foundation.

John served on the Board of Directors for The Walt Disney Company (2004-2019) and Wells Fargo & Co. (2006-2018) and as a trustee of Caltech (2008-2022). John is an Advisory Board member of the US Chamber China Center. He is also active in the not-for-profit community, and is a board member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, member of CFR, national trustee of The First Tee and Governor of the San Francisco Symphony.