From left: John Chen, executive chair and CEO of Blackberry, Greg Boyce, chairman and CEO of Peabody Energy, Vietnam’s President Truong Tan Sang, Steve Mollenkopf, CEO of Qualcomm and Shu Yinbiao, president of the State Grid Corporation of China, attend a dialogue at the Apec CEO Summit at the China National Convention Centre (CNCC) in Beijing yesterday.

Bloomberg

Beijing

BlackBerry chief executive officer John Chen said he’s interested in partnerships to expand in China, the world’s largest smartphone market, after meeting the heads of Xiaomi and Lenovo Group.

BlackBerry’s strengths in security, encryption and privacy are in demand in China and there may be opportunities for agreements on technology licensing, distribution or manufacturing, Chen said in an interview yesterday in Beijing, where he was attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO Summit.

During the summit, Chen said he met with Xiaomi’s CEO Lei Jun, and Lenovo’s head Yang Yuanqing. These meetings with China’s two largest smartphone vendors come at a time when BlackBerry is trying to return to growth after declining phone shipments dragged it to net losses in each of the past three years.

“It does seem that a more efficient way is to have a good partner to be here,” Chen said in the interview. “I’m here this time to look at what opportunities there may be. We have not really focused on this market. It’s a huge market but it’s a very highly competitive market too.”

Chen said he also met Cher Wang, chairwoman of Taoyuan, Taiwan-based HTC Corp.

Chen took the helm a year ago to lead a turnaround after shipments of its smartphones plunged in the past four years as it struggles to compete with touch-screen devices produced by Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. The Hong Kong native outsourced some production, sold property and focused on business customers by bringing back phones with signature physical keyboards and offering more software-based services.

The changes have helped put the Waterloo, Ontario-based company on track for break-even cash flow by the end of this fiscal year and for a return to profit the next year, Chen reiterated today.

In 2013, there were 19.2 million smartphones shipped with the BlackBerry operating system compared with 51.1 million units in 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The company in September released its new square-screened Passport smartphone which sold 200,000 units in its debut.