Remember BlackBerry 5G keypad smartphone? Yeah, that is probably NOT happening

Remember BlackBerry’s revival plans by a Canadian firm Onward Mobility? It was dominating headlines just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and ever since then, there was radio silence, until last month when hints of a late 2022 shipping were given. Latest updates on that front now drop a sad news for fans who expected the revival of those QWERTY keypad phones – the company just lost the license to use the BlackBerry name.

Based on a recent revelation from founder of CrackBerry.com, BlackBerry’s plan to license the name to Onward Mobility is not going ahead. No concrete reason behind this exists but CrackBerry’s Kevin Michaluk says that BlackBerry prefers to go away quietly from the phone business. Onward Mobility is yet to announce anything officially on this front, hence you should wait for an official update, if you are among those who had hoped for this since a long time.

BlackBerry phones probably not coming back again

Back in 2020, Onward Mobility had made some bold claims for a 5G enabled BlackBerry phone that could have revolutionised the enterprise phone space. However, its partnership with TCL had also big promises, none of which ever worked out.

After its departure in the early 2010s, BlackBerry made a comeback with TCL in 2016 launching a couple of Android smartphones. While some of them were plain modern-day Android phones with strengthened BlackBerry software, a couple of keyboard phones came under the “KEY” lineup. Some of the later models such as BlackBerry Key 2 and Key 2 LE tried to bring the prices down, before TCL parted ways with the name in favour of its own phones.

BlackBerry had recently sold all its patent to Catapult IP Innovations earlier this February for a price of $600 million. The company will still reserve the license to use those patents and some of its employees will also move to the new venture.

On the plus side, the demand for a tradition QWERTY keyboard phone has been restricted to a nice segment, with most enterprises either settling for Android phones or iPhones.