Blackberry New CEO Wants To Revive Company Products Physical Keyboard; Sues Ryan Seacrest Co-Founded Typo For Blatant Infringement

Blackberry has a new CEO and one of his main priorities for the struggling company this year: bring back the physical keyboards that the brand's phone units became famous for.

John Chen, who acted as interim BlackBerry CEO until November, said he personally love keyboards and he hopes to bring them back on BB smartphones. In an interview with Bloomberg Television's Jon Erlichman at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the 59-year old software magnate said that company's phones will "predominantly" have keypads. Last year, Blackberry tried to keep up with the trend to be able to compete against the likes of Apple and Samsung by introducing touchscreen-based BlackBerry 10. However, the unit flopped, leading to billions of writedowns.

One move that proves how much Chen wants to retain its roots in physical keyboard is the company's decision to file a lawsuit against Typo which manufactures physical keyboard for Apple's iPhone products. The Los Angeles-based company, which is co-founded by Ryan Seacrest, makes $99 worth of devices that users can snap onto their iPhone 5 and 5S like a normal case. Blackberry sues the company for what it calls "a blatant infringement against BlackBerry's iconic keyboard."

Another proof that the Waterloo-based firm is walking away from the trends that Apple and Samsung have set is the decision to focus more on the government market. In December last year, Chen announced that the company has signed a five-year deal with Foxconn Technology Group who will outsource the manufacturing and design of some of Blackberry phones.

"Foxconn can be a really great partner, not only to eliminate my inventory risk, but also their ability to penetrate various different markets, call it the developing and emerging markets," he said.

Earlier, Blackberry announced that it has also taken former HTC Corp. (2498) and Sony Ericsson executive Ron Louks to its helm and he be assigned to oversee the way the company run devices.