2016 was the year that Blackberry , the Canadian manufacturer formerly known as RIM, decided to abandon the production of its legendary mobile phones to focus on software and security solutions. However, a firm decided to take the lead and continue satisfying the many fans who still had these devices.
The Chinese company TCL Corporation , dedicated to consumer electronics and born in 1981, acquired a license from the North American company to continue producing devices under the BlackBerry banner. Since then TCL has launched several models with a physical keyboard, some of them with a design that drank a lot from phones that the Asian company already marketed.
However, the agreement between both parties will soon come to an end . Without giving a clear cause or justification for it, Blackberry has communicated through a post on Twitter that the license agreement will expire on August 31. The announcement leaves a dark future for Blackberry Terminals.
“When TCL announced in December 2016 that it would have signed a brand license and technology support agreement with BlackBerry Limited to continue making new Blackberry phones globally, we were very excited to take on that challenge,” they say from the Canadian company. The KEYone was the first phone of TCL’s batch, putting her hardware and BlackBerry its security software and tools.
BlackBerry Limited claims to be “proud” to have associated with TCL these four years and for the launch of models such as the aforementioned KEYone, in addition to the Blackberry Motion, Ley2 and KEY2 LE. However, in its amicable break-up statement, the company insists that “without turning back” TCL will stop selling Blackberry-branded mobile devices.
2 more years of support
The company formerly known as RIM recalls that from the end of August TCL will not have the rights to “design, manufacture or sell” any phone with the blackberry banner . In any case, the Chinese company will be able to provide support to the smartphones that it already has in its catalog, including customer service and the guarantee until August 31, 2022 .
This announcement predicts that the mythical Blackberry phones could stop being manufactured or new models designed forever and would have their days numbered. Although there is always the possibility that the company is keeping an ace up its sleeve and has signed (or is open to sign) an agreement similar to that of TCL with some other technology company.
The brand that was number 2 in mobile telephony and number 1 in that market in some countries such as the US only sold 200,000 units of telephones in 2016 and since then its sales have been falling more and more until it has an almost non-existent market share.
Your app store closed in December
In December 2017, Blackberry announced that the BlackBerry World mobile app store would die in two years. Thus, a little over a month ago, the store of apps designed for the RIM operating system went black.
Since 2015, with the introduction of the Priv model, the Blackberry had opened the doors to Android apps.
