It's Over: BlackBerry Is Done Making Phones
Once the kings of the smartphone game and forever champions of the physical keyboard, BlackBerry is finally giving up the ghost and will no longer make phones.
The news comes by way of the Canadian company's latest quarterly financials in which John Chen, Executive Chairman and CEO of BlackBerry expressed plans to focus on software, and leave the actual phone-making to other people:
"Under this strategy, we are focusing on software development, including security and applications. The company plans to end all internal hardware development and will outsource that function to partners. This allows us to reduce capital requirements and enhance return on invested capital."
It's not a huge surprise. Earlier this year, staffers on Capitol Hill were notified that once the current stock of BlackBerry devices ran out, they would have to transition to iPhones or Android devices because, well, there weren't going to be any new BlackBerry devices coming.
BlackBerry's move into the modern post-iPhone world has been troubled from the get go. When BlackBerry released its first BlackBerry 10 phones in 2013, the reaction was relatively tepid, despite the hardware's fun throwback to keyboard die-hards with phones like the BlackBerry Q10, and more recently the square-shaped Passport. Then there was the Priv, a BlackBerry-styled device that ran Android instead of BlackBerry's own operating system. Apparently it wasn't quite enough to right the ship.
The company's financials indicate that the software is growing and still keeping the company alive and well, but it was time to cut the dead weight that was the actual phones. It truly is the end of an era.
Source: BlackBerry
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