Does the word BBM ring a bell?
Blackberry once changed the meaning of business on the go. Your favourite Blackberry phone will no longer be running and supporting its original operating system as it has reached its end of life page.
The rage that this phone caused in 1990’s and changed how we looked at a phone for business needs. Its emailing, querty keyboard and in built messaging app is unmatched till date and it’s the end of an era.
The move, first announced in 2020, effectively kills off a line-up that remains popular to this day in parts of the world for its reliability and security.
The company’s appeal waned as Apple’s iPhone and other hoard of Android handsets with larger displays, better graphics and wider app offerings took over the market during the past decade.
The Canadian company stopped making its own smartphones in 2016. It shifted to a software-only business and licensing its brand and services to TCL Communication Technology Holdings Ltd. It continued to release devices until its deal ran out in 2020. The TCL devices were powered by Alphabet’s Android OS and will be supported until August.
Yet nostalgia for the BlackBerry name made it one of the meme stocks of 2021, triggering a massive spike in its share price in January before a similarly steep decline.
“These devices will lack the ability to receive over the air provisioning updates and as such, this functionality will no longer be expected to reliably function, including for data, phone calls, SMS and 9-1-1 functionality,” the company wrote. “Applications will also have limited functionality.”
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