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BlackBerry’s latest revival attempt crashes before launch

Michael Allison
By

Just weeks after announcing that it would definitely launch a new BlackBerry-branded phone in 2022, OnwardMobility has announced an immediate shutdown. The company will no longer be making a new Blackberry phone, and the future of the storied brand in mobile technology again appears bleak.

The Texas-based company had acquired rights to use the BlackBerry brand for mobile in 2020, with a phone initially planned for launch in 2021. When that didn’t pan out, the company also announced that it was still on track, but it would just take a little bit longer. With supply chain issues affecting companies as large as Samsung, it was understandable that a small startup would be unable to make headway.

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“It is with great sadness that we announce that OnwardMobility will be shutting down, and we will no longer be proceeding with the development of an ultra-secure smartphone with a physical keyboard. Please know that this was not a decision that we made lightly or in haste. We share your disappointment in this news and assure you this is not the outcome we worked and hoped for,” the OnwardMobility team announced in February. It wasn’t exactly out of the blue. A report earlier in the month revealed the startup had lost the rights to the BlackBerry brand.

It’s for the best

Nokia is another classic brand with a tarnished reputation.
Nokia is another classic brand with a tarnished reputation. Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

BlackBerry hasn’t been particularly successful in the post-iPhone world. The company tried to compete on two fronts by launching the Blackberry 10 to take on the iPhone and the PlayBook OS to take on modern tablets. Both efforts failed spectacularly.

A partnership with TCL saw the company launch phones like the KeyOne and Key2. While lauded for their niche designs, neither were commercial successes in a world grown accustomed to touchscreen keyboards. With failure after failure, it might be time to call it quits — and whispers from former BlackBerry enthusiast publication CrackBerry indicate the brand was thinking along the same lines.

The BlackBerry brand was a good and respected brand in the 2000s, but these fruitless revivals aren’t doing the name any favors. Much like Nokia and its endless parade of aggressively mediocre clones, yet another failed BlackBerry revival will lead to the brand name being even more associated with failure. There’s nothing more embarrassing than not knowing when to leave a party. BlackBerry surely gets the message now.

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Michael Allison
Michael Allison
Mobile News Writer
A UK-based tech journalist for Digital Trends, helping keep track and make sense of the fast-paced world of tech with a…
A new BlackBerry with a keyboard is still on the schedule for 2022
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A new BlackBerry phone is still in the cards for 2022, according to hardware partner OnwardMobility. Following a breakup with TCL in 2020, BlackBerry partnered with the little-known Texas company OnwardMobility to launch a new phone in 2021. After missing that launch period, the Onward Mobility team shared an update this week, letting BlackBerry enthusiasts know that their phone was still coming.

"Everyone has eagerly awaited additional information following our last announcement, but 2021 was truly a challenging year to launch a new phone, much less one with the high expectations we set and the fact that we want to get it right!" the OnwardMobility team wrote, "While we encountered various delays that prevented us from shipping in 2021, we will be providing more regular updates starting this month that will clarify and answer many of your questions about the ultra-secure 5G enterprise smartphone (still with a keyboard!) we’re bringing to market."

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BlackBerry Key2. Credits: BlackBerry official.

After kickstarting the smartphone era, BlackBerry's classic devices and services are finally shutting down. No, not the Android-powered modern BlackBerries such as the KeyOne, Key2, and Key2 LE, but anything that ran a BlackBerry-branded operating system. Whether this is a classic QWERTY keyboard powered by BlackBerry 7, or the iPhone-inspired BlackBerry 10, or even the forgotten BlackBerry PlayBook OS -- it's all shutting down this month.
"As another milestone in the BlackBerry journey, we will be taking steps to decommission the legacy services for BlackBerry 7.1 OS and earlier, BlackBerry 10 software, BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.1, and earlier versions, with an end of life or termination date of January 4, 2022," the company announced. "As of this date, devices running these legacy services and software through either carrier or Wi-Fi connections will no longer reliably function, including for data, phone calls, SMS, and 911 functionality. We have chosen to extend our service until then as an expression of thanks to our loyal partners and customers."
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The company tried to rejuvenate its smartphone business by launching its own touchscreen phones and later its own operating system in 2013, but had little success. Unable to keep up,ity stopped the creation of smartphones in 2016 and licensed services to TCL Ltd. between 2016 to 2020. BlackBerry promised to launch a smartphone by the end of 2021 in partnership with OnwardMobility, but that hasn't panned out. 
The company has now shifted its focus to selling software. It briefly had a nostalgia-fueled increase in its share price this year, which later nearly returned to its original price. While the market has been saturated with multiple companies claiming a stake in the smartphone pie, hopefully, BlackBerry manages to return to some form of relevance with its current partnership. 

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BlackBerry is the smartphone brand that steadfastly refuses to die. The presumed-dead name has been resurrected once again, this time by a new company called OnwardMobility. It will work with manufacturer FIH Mobile to create and sell a 5G BlackBerry Android phone with a physical keyboard, ready for a potential release in the U.S. and Europe during the first half of 2021.

You read that right: A new BlackBerry phone with a physical keyboard and 5G, running Google’s Android software, is coming next year. TCL Communications was the last company to produce BlackBerry smartphones. It did so under license from BlackBerry Ltd., which continues to provide mobile security services, but isn’t in the hardware business anymore. TCL let its license lapse in February 2020 when modern, Android-based BlackBerry phones became a thing of the past. Until now.

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