Full disclosure: I did a one-year internship at BlackBerry when it was still called Research In Motion. It was my first and only office job, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. My first phone was a BlackBerry Bold, and I’m still a big fan of hardware keyboards.
Even after finally offering Android phones at the end of 2015, BlackBerry never saw sales soar. Many would argue the Canadian company simply took too long to adapt to the very quickly changing market that is mobile phones.
It’s easy to write off BlackBerry. After all, RIM is never going to be the king again. But that doesn’t mean BlackBerry is gone, at least not yet. The BlackBerry brand is incredibly resilient.
Some demand for BlackBerry devices still exists. BlackBerry fans still exist. Licensees, carriers, and distributors looking to sell BlackBerries still exist.
At Mobile World Congress, TCL unveiled the BlackBerry KeyOne, an Android Nougat phone with a hardware keyboard. I interviewed Alex Thurber, head of BlackBerry’s mobility solutions unit, about the bigger picture: BlackBerry has transitioned to a licensing-only model, meaning it doesn’t make or sell phones anymore and is instead focusing entirely on software.
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