BlackBerry was reportedly on the process of designing its last smartphone and it's planning to launch its last flagship keyboard phone next year.
Reports showed that the Canadian tech giant has finally made up its mind in giving up on the fight that it struggled to even stay afloat. After its leading competitors-Apple and Samsung-ate up the largest chunk of the market share, the company appeared to have given up on this fight.
For the nth time, the firm's CEO, John Chen hinted that this would be their last device in one of his interviews with the Bloomberg TV. This announcement, however, did not come as a surprise to many as the company has told this kind of news, so to speak, to its customers.
"We have one keyboard phone I promised people. It's coming," Chen told Bloomberg's Emily Chang.
Chen's announcement came after the company decided to stop manufacturing its trademark QWERTY keyboard, which the company officially announced last September. Instead, the company will just focus on software development.
BlackBerry's sudden shift to full software development, leaving behind its hardware development arm, did not totally surprise industry experts as the company has been struggling financially over the past years.
With its strategy to solely focus on software development, the company will be able to significantly cut expenses from research and development for new hardware. Instead, the company will source third-party companies' technologies in minding its hardware area by way of providing licenses to its software to its developed software.
Will this really be the last smartphone that BlackBerry will produce? There are always that possibility that BlackBerry will, at some point, changes its mind and continue producing its popular smartphone just like what it did when they launched some of its later models, the Tech Times reported.
