BlackBerry knows it is facing some steep competition from Apple and Samsung in the handset business. The company's CEO is unsure how much longer they will continue making handsets.

CEO John Chen said that future phones after the BlackBerry Priv would depend on the "business case." This translates to mean that if the next handset from BlackBerry, which will feature Google's Android operating system and a slide-out keyboard, is not successful, the company probably will stop making handsets in the future, as early as next year, Tech Radar reports. 

Chen said, "Sometime next year we have to make our device business profitable, otherwise I have to rethink what I do there." 

BlackBerry needs to sell a much larger amount of phones each year to remain profitable. Chen told The Verge 5 million phones need to be sold each year for it to make sense to continue making them. 

The last phone that BlackBerry introduced was the BlackBerry Passport, which only sold 8,000 units in the first quarter this year. 

Chen admits 2016 is a big test for BlackBerry. If it's not a good year for sales of the handset, the company will shift their focus to the software side and continuing to improve the BlackBerry operating system.

BlackBerry's idea to use the popular Android operating system in the BlackBerry Priv might encourage some buyers to give BlackBerry another chance. In the past, BlackBerry users enjoyed the full QWERTY physical keyboard on BlackBerry handsets. When the Apple iPhone and Android smartphones took over, customers ditched their BlackBerrys in favor of the touchscreen keyboards from Apple and Android. The BlackBerry Priv will have a slide-out QWERTY keyboard as well as the onscreen keyboard built-in to the Android operating system.

Chen is keeping a positive attitude about the handset business for BlackBerry, but he is also being very realistic