The BlackBerry phone, depended on by former U.S. president Barack Obama and one of the most widely used Canadian technology products ever produced during its heyday, may be no more.

Devices currently in the market will continue to receive support but prospects for any new BlackBerry phones dimmed considerably Monday when the Chinese electronics giant that has maintained the brand profile around the world said it will stop releasing and selling BlackBerry-branded handsets later this year.

TCL Communication, a partly state-owned multinational that designs, manufactures and markets mobile and internet products in more than 160 countries, in a tweet said it “will no longer be selling” BlackBerry-branded phones as of Aug. 31, 2020.

TCL said it has no further rights to design and manufacture the phones, but will continue to provide warranty and customer service until the end of August 2022, or for as long as required by local law where the device was purchased. TCL said it had been “blessed” to work with BlackBerry.

“This looks like the end of the road for BlackBerry smartphone hardware,” Neil Mawston, executive director of the global wireless practice of research firm Strategy Analytics, said in an email.

“The TCL partnership has not worked and few new models have been developed or sold in recent quarters. The BlackBerry brand is seen as old-fashioned, and keypad-led smartphones do not resonate with touchscreen consumers of today. A cynic might say BlackBerry was used for technology or expertise transfer and then discarded.”

Mawston said BlackBerry may yet find a Chinese, Indonesian, African or other company to license its smartphone hardware, but this will be a niche and “BlackBerry will never again be a mass-market brand.”

Waterloo-based BlackBerry Ltd. signed a brand licensing and technology support deal with TCL Communication in December 2016 that saw BlackBerry’s security software and service suite and related brand assets licensed to TCL, which adopted the BlackBerry Mobile trading name to sell BlackBerry branded devices in world markets.

At the time, BlackBerry said the move was part of its plan to stop making smartphones and focus on software and cybersecurity.

TCL released three phones with the patented keyboard during the partnership, while BlackBerry provided apps and a security-enhanced version of the Android operating system for the devices, with TCL paying BlackBerry a royalty for each one sold.

TCL’s BlackBerry devices featured the physical keyboards that once made the phones a must-have with business and government leaders — combined with contemporary Android operating system features.

BlackBerry was a market leader in the late 2000s but its share of global smartphone sales collapsed to just 0.1 per cent a decade later as it failed to keep pace with iPhone offerings and Android handsets. BlackBerry has struggled to notch significant sales even with the partnership with TCL, which has been entering the smartphone market with its own branded handsets.

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In the face of continued softness in global smartphone growth and with the emergence of several new Android handset makers in Asia, it is unclear if BlackBerry will seek out another manufacturing partner or take manufacturing in house to keep the BlackBerry device alive.

BlackBerry Ltd. spokesperson Matt Chandler said “we’re not making any additional comments at this time.”

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