Samsung Electronics, whose Android-based phones are a leader in smartphone sales, has already offered phones with physical keyboards. But more important, it is aggressively going after professionals, who were the first adopters of the BlackBerry and who appear to disproportionately remain its final users. This year it introduced Knox, a set of security features for Android aimed at government and corporate users.

Motorola Mobility, as it rebuilds itself under Google’s ownership, might also re-enter the keyboard phone market, too. Before the Google takeover, some of its most popular Android phones included a slide-out keyboard.

Mr. Golvin said he was skeptical about any company trying to build a high-end smartphone with a physical keyboard. BlackBerry’s method of combining a screen and keyboard significantly reduces screen size, he said. The smaller screen often requires developers to tweak their apps to work on the different size, making some reluctant to make apps that work on the phones.

But more important, Mr. Golvin said, is that the overwhelming majority of smartphone users have spoken and found that the downsides of on-screen keyboards — namely, more typos — are outweighed by a variety of other advantages.

While there remains a chance that BlackBerry will continue to churn out handsets, the company’s results on Friday underscored how big of a challenge that would be. Because the handset business requires a large sales volume to be profitable and to sustain development, many analysts expect BlackBerry to focus its remaining resources on software and services for corporations.

That strategy could change if the company is sold. The company’s largest shareholder has made a tentative and conditional offer to buy the 90 percent of BlackBerry’s stock it does not own. But many analysts expect BlackBerry to soon leave the business of making phones regardless of the owner.

The loss reported on Friday mainly reflected a $934 million write-down of a growing inventory of unwanted BlackBerry Z10 phones, the devices that the company had hoped would restore its fortunes, as well as $72 million in charges related largely to layoffs.