Blackberry seems to be starting afresh with its new partnership with OnwardMobility. Its days with TCL Communication, which was licensed to sell BlackBerry devices in several markets including India, may need come to an end, but OnwardMobility will help the corporate revisit within the market. And that we will see a fresh 5G Blackberry smartphone within the half of next year, 2021.
The three companies will work together to form a replacement 5G BlackBerry Android smartphone with physical keyboard and therefore the device is going to be launched within half of 2021 in North America and Europe. There’s no word on whether the upcoming BlackBerry phone will come to India or not
The phone will get BB branding and a physical keyboard, a bit like the old days. It’ll run Android as Blackberry OS is not anymore and obtain 5G support
With Blackberry’s loyal fanbase and qwerty keypad lovers, the device might receive an excellent response. It’ll be interesting to ascertain how the phone actually seems like actually and what it brings to the table.
Unfortunately, the upcoming Blackberry phone is confirmed to launch only in North America and Europe as of now and there’s no information regarding its availability within the Indian market
The 5G BlackBerry phone is additionally said to possess competitive pricing. This means that it wouldn’t be something that would combat the likes of Samsung Galaxy Note 20 or the upcoming Apple iPhone 12. Instead, it’s likely to be a mid-range offering.
More than half the worldwide population own smartphones today, therefore the market is gigantic,” OnwardMobility CEO Peter Franklin said that’s what is been missing and however, is that the ultra-secure and productivity-centric smartphone which will address the requirements of enterprise users, government users, and security-conscious consumers – and that’s the gap we expect to fill.”
Blackberry said that’s once a secure business phone, always a secure business phone?
Research in Motion’s BlackBerry phones was a number of the primary true smartphones to become popular among consumers, but they first got popular amid corporate clients buying devices that might safeguard info kept and sent by employees.
While the BlackBerry market share to proper smartphones following the iPhone and Android platforms, it remained a trusted enterprise device for years.
OnwardMobility is clearly tapping into that legacy of trust – and productivity, since they’ve already committed to including a physical keyboard on the 2021 device.
TCL’s BlackBerry phones had physical keyboards, too, but weren’t successful enough for the phones industry underdog to stay the license. In short: people could also be nostalgic for the times of physical keyboards, but not enough to travel out of their thanks to buying them in large numbers.
Phones have changed since BlackBerry devices reigned, and therefore the current tall, narrow format has meant that keyboards shoved to rock bottom, like TCL’s BlackBerry Key2, aren’t terribly comfortable to type on. We’ll see if OnwardMobility’s phone finishes up with a special design because it gets closer to its release window within the half of 2021.
