HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — Stepping away from its signature product, BlackBerry will no longer make its own smartphones, the device it once defined.

Before being overtaken by iPhones from Apple, BlackBerry’s phones were so popular that they were nicknamed CrackBerry, and President Obama battled security officials to retain his BlackBerry when he took office. But the distressed Canadian company’s decision, announced on Wednesday, means the BlackBerry name will now be found only on handsets made by a group owned by phone companies in Indonesia, which has licensed the brand.

BlackBerry’s market share long ago collapsed to single digits in North America and Europe, despite the introduction of a new operating system and the company’s decision to make phones based on the Android operating system from Google.

The abandoning of the phone business that made BlackBerry a household name is a major step in a strategy begun by John S. Chen, the executive chairman and chief executive, to turn the money-losing company into a software and wireless device security business. When Mr. Chen joined BlackBerry almost three years ago, he made it clear that the fast-declining phone business was living on borrowed time.