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BlackBerry has been pretty much nonexistent over the past couple of years despite launching a handful of Android-powered smartphones. Regardless, there was news that the company wanted to take another crack at it and deliver us a 5G BlackBerry phone. Now, according to a post on the Crackberry forum, this device is not going to happen. The 5G BlackBerry phone was canceled.
The 5G was just canceled after a lot of delays
We all know BlackBerry as the company that dominated the smartphone market back during the mid and late 2000s. However, times have changed. Just like Motorola, Nokia, and HTC, BlackBerry was just not able to recapture its former glory. Between 2015 and 2019, BlackBerry gave us several Android-powered phones, and most of them added their own unique form factor that revolved around a physical keyboard. Neither of the devices, however, were able to really capture the market.
A while back, we got word that a company named OnwardMobility obtained the rights to manufacture BlackBerry phones. The company said a 5G BlackBerry phone was to launch in the first half of 2021. That didn’t happen, and it left all of us wondering what was going to happen. Kevin Michaluk, the founder of Crackberry, came out and stated that the license granted to OnwardMobility to build BlackBerry phones fell through. This means the company canceled its plans to bring a 5G BlackBerry phone.
Michaluk gave us as much information as he could from his sources. “… at this point [it’s] probably best for all of us to [forget] about this train wreck. Well, train-wreck is too complimentary as it would imply they built a train that they then wrecked.” He stated that he didn’t sign a non-disclosure agreement, but he still wanted to keep things vague. He wanted his sources to maintain anonymity.
This might be the final nail in the coffin for BlackBerry
BlackBerry could never reignite the spark that it had in its hay day. Because of this, its Android phones just tanked hard, and that left the company few options. Earlier this month, the company sold off the remainder of its patent portfolio for $600 million. While that’s not a good sign, it might be for the best. Right now, the smartphone market pretty much belongs to Apple and Samsung. They’re the leaders of the smartphone market of today, while BlackBerry was the leader of the smartphone market of yesterday.
The BlackBerry name will live on as one of the pillars that the modern smartphone market is built upon; that’s no small title. BlackBerry was, and always will be one of the most important smartphone companies.