BlackBerry: We Just Sold 1,000 Phones

It is often said that the key to happiness is low expectations, and BlackBerry’s public relations department is working overtime to lower its bar. The company put out a statement Thursday trumpeting a new deal with Datev, a German software company. The highlight? Datev has agreed to purchase 1,000 BlackBerry 10 smartphones. At its peak, BlackBerry sold almost 7,000 phones per hour.

No company has had a harder time lately than BlackBerry, and the company has been reminding people it is still open for business. Since October, it has announced that an Italian consulting firm bought 3,500 devices, that the Australian Safety Transport Bureau and a financial services company in India bought an undisclosed number of phones, and that PSA Peugeot Citroën would deploy 10,000 BlackBerry 10 smartphones.