BlackBerry is a very different company now compared to the early days of the smartphone revolution in 2007 when the iPhone was launched, the market share is very small and has been for a while too. Back in 2017 we ran a piece titled ‘BlackBerry is officially over’ and at that time in the final quarter of 2016, BlackBerry had only shipped 207,900 phones, whereas Apple had sold 77 million in the same time.
In 2016 BlackBerry announced that they wouldn’t make their own phones anymore, instead using third party companies and partners to manufacture any new phones. The company who had the rights to produce and manufacture the phones is called TCL and today it has announced that by the 31st August 2020 BlackBerry branded phones would no longer be produced.
The most recent BlackBerry phones, the KeyOne and the Key2 LE would be supported up until August 2022.
TCL has said that it no longer has the rights “to design, manufacture, or sell any new BlackBerry mobile devices.”
Over the years, the BlackBerry eco-system has been facing behind, in 2018 support for WhatsApp on BlackBerry was pulled and in 2016 PayPal dropped support for its app on BlackBerry.
