RIP BlackBerry: Company pulls the plug on production of its own phones

It was considered to be the “must have” device among consumers, dominating the mobile phone market for years. However, BlackBerry soon found itself struggling to compete in the ever-dynamic industry, and has now finally decided to give up trying to play catch-up with rivals such as Apple and Samsung.

The Canadian company, formerly known as Research In Motion Limited, announced that it will stop designing its own handset devices after 14 years. It will, instead, outsource hardware development to partners. “The company plans to end all internal hardware development and will outsource that function to partners,” CEO John Chen said in a statement, according to The Verge.

“We are reaching an inflection point with our strategy. Our financial foundation is strong, and our pivot to software is taking hold,” Chen also was quoted as saying.

BlackBerry, the former market leader in mobile devices, has lost its following – which reportedly reached 85 million subscribers in 2013 – after the Android and iOS platforms invaded the industry. Early this year, BlackBerry subscribers fell to just above 20 million. In October 2015, BlackBerry tried to revive its beleaguered situation by shifting its business strategy. It began releasing Android-based smartphones, such as the BlackBerry PRIV and Blackberry DTEK50, which ran Google’s Android operating system.

However, the company soon came to realise that the smartphones, featuring a slide-out physical keyboard, were too costly to catch the attention of most mobile users. “BlackBerry can't keep producing its own phones indefinitely just to serve a small subset of its clients addicted to its home-grown devices," Ben Wood of the CCS Insight consultancy told BBC. “BlackBerry had made no secret of the fact that it might shut down its own phone-making business. Pushing it out to a third party is a sensible solution - but any manufacturer making BlackBerry branded devices will ultimately face the same challenges.”

BlackBerry has yet to confirm whether any further BlackBerry phones will be released, BBC reported.