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BlackBerry, née RIM, has appear that information technology will no longer develop its own smartphone or tablet hardware. The company is currently transitioning from a hardware-centric business to a software development visitor. It expects to consummate that transition more finer now that information technology has ended its own internal hardware efforts.

"Our new Mobility Solutions strategy is showing signs of momentum, including our start major device software licensing agreement with a telecom joint venture in Republic of indonesia," CEO John Chen told investors. "Nether this strategy, we are focusing on software development, including security and applications. The company plans to finish all internal hardware development and will outsource that part to partners. This allows us to reduce majuscule requirements and enhance render on invested uppercase."

BlackBerryFall

Since 2022, BlackBerry'south market share has fallen even farther. Information technology'southward now below 1% of the marketplace.

Today'due south news marks the end of an era for BlackBerry, but ane that'due south been a long time coming. The company is a classic example of the so-called innovator's dilemma, in which a powerful visitor that dominates a marketplace is unable to anticipate what kind of products its customers will need in the future. Rather than experimenting and introducing new products and services, a company will double downwards on the features and capabilities that made it popular.

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The BlackBerry PlayBook could've revolutionized the early Android tablet market place, if information technology hadn't been a half-baked mess.

BlackBerry's missteps began with its systemic refusal to suit to the iPhone and what it represented. Like Microsoft (at the time) it dismissed the iPhone and its touch on-axial display as a gimmick. BlackBerry congenital its business organisation on corporate contracts, concrete keyboards, and email — not multimedia streaming, consumer-friendly feature sets, and large (again, at the fourth dimension) LCDs. In 2022, BlackBerry was fielding still-popular smaller models like the Pearl, the Curve, and the executive favorite Bold. At the same time, companies like Apple and Samsung were launching dual-cadre hardware with larger displays, higher resolutions, and consumer-friendly feature sets. Possibly about importantly, Apple and Samsung were at the forefront of a new, skyrocketing mobile app scene that was manner ahead of what passed for tertiary-political party (and by and large vertical-market) apps on BlackBerrys.

At the time, BlackBerry's joint CEOs, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazardis, insisted that the company'southward fortunes would recover thanks to increased uptake in foreign markets and strong partnerships with corporations around the globe. Past the time BlackBerry woke upward and realized its unabridged market place was being eaten out from under it, it was too late to catch up.

The company's belatedly, long-awaited BlackBerry 10 OS may have been popular with a tiny segment of the BlackBerry true-blue, but it utterly failed in-market. BlackBerry bet that business executives would flock dorsum to its physical keyboards, but by the fourth dimension these devices were ready, the market place for physical keyboards in a smartphone was basically dead. The visitor'southward first Android device, the Priv, wasn't bad, but information technology wasn't great, either, particularly not at its initial $700 price point.

BlackBerryPriv

BlackBerry bet on Android and a make name that reminded people of an old-fashioned word for "bathroom" (privy). Non a winning combination.

The trouble with betting on concrete keyboards wasn't that people disliked them. The problem was, the overwhelming majority of smartphone users today never owned a BlackBerry device or a physical keyboard at all. The Priv's key feature was an attempt to drum upwardly enthusiasm in a fading market, not a adequacy that would intrinsically entreatment to new customers looking at BlackBerry for the showtime fourth dimension.

Earlier this year, BlackBerry launched the DTEK 50, a rebranded Alcatel Idol 4. Any time to come devices that the company launches will presumably be licensed from other manufacturers as well. The good news is that BlackBerry'south software and services division are showing signs of growth and may exist sufficient to carry the visitor frontwards, for a fiddling while anyway. Whether it tin can continue to build on this growth at present that information technology's only licensing hardware is less clear.