When it was reported that U.S. Senate staffers will not be offered BlackBerry devices once existing supplies have been exhausted, it was also reported that BlackBerry had informed Verizon and AT&T that production of all BlackBerry OS 10 devices will be discontinued. However, in an email sent to CrackBerry, the company confirmed that it will in fact not cease production of such devices.
According to the statement, BlackBerry will continue to “actively support sales” of its BlackBerry OS 10 devices in most markets and will continue to support its in-house platform. Interestingly, the company informed U.S. carriers that it has ceased manufacturing of the BlackBerry Classic, with the company insinuating that procurement of the Classic might be a bit tricky moving forward.
“As part of this, and after many successful years in the market, we have informed our U.S. carriers that the manufacturing cycle of only our BlackBerry Classic will cease,” reads BlackBerry’s statement.
Early BlackBerry OS 10 devices alienated longtime BlackBerry users, since those devices did not have a keyboard. The Classic was the company’s attempt to retain those hardcore users, but the attempt was a rather lukewarm one. Even though the Classic has an excellent keyboard and great battery life, the processor powering the phone is quite old and the inclusion of a trackpad was a questionable decision, given the touchscreen.
The discontinuation of the Classic is the latest in a series of setbacks for BlackBerry, which saw poor financials for its first fiscal 2016 quarter. The company lost a whopping $670 million, with the device business continuing to lose money. BlackBerry CEO John Chen still has faith in the device space, with the company expected to release two phones. One of those phones is rumored to feature a Priv-like keyboard, and the other is expected to be an all-touchscreen phone.
