Washington, Jan 7 : Blackberry has hired former Sony Ericsson executive Ron Louks to head the sinking smartphone company's devices and emerging solutions business.

Louks will hopefully bring a much-needed boost in salesmanship to the division of Blackberry that has lost a number of customers to rivals like Apple and Google.

According to the Verge, Blackberry's new CEO John Chen said that most of Louks' time would be spent with customers, carriers, and partners.

Hiring Louks shows that Blackberry still wants to focus on its mobile-device division , despite speculation that the company could abandon it in the wake of huge losses, the report added. (ANI)