Blackberry Ceases To Design Its Own Smartphones

Blackberry has announced the termination of the in-house designing of it's smartphones after 14-years. The company will now focus on its software and security products.

"The company plans to end all internal hardware development and will outsource that function to partners," said CEO John Chen, according to The Verge.

Chen saw this coming some time back and was keen on closing the division if it did not become profitable. In May, he told Bloomberg that he would know by September whether that will be likely. The main reason behind this decision has been the company's struggle to keep pace with its competitors, Apple and Samsung.

Blackberry stops designing of phones - https://t.co/hO9jaVaqsdpic.twitter.com/Pg9CffeAtd

— Populimag (@populimag) September 28, 2016

The company incurred losses as it lost the position of an iconic brand which it enjoyed before players like Apple entered the mobile market. The company could claim only 0.1 percent of the smartphone market in the second quarter which meant a sale of mere 400,000 units. "I always wanted to make sure that we keep having the iconic devices," Mr Chen told BNN. "I just need to find a way to be efficient and be able to make money. I think we found the model."

In October, last year, Blackberry made efforts towards changing the handset business by designing a smartphone that ran on Google's Android OS instead of its own BB10 software. However, the device could not appeal to mass market as it was too expensive due to its slide-out physical keyboard.

Blackberry had indicated the launch of another handset based on Android OS but after these reports coming forward, that seems unlikely. The CEO confirmed that it will have will little control on the future handsets or other hardware products introduced in the market and will receive a royalty fee on any phone sold by the partner-manufacturers.

However, it is not clear whether the phones coming from these partnerships will be able to enter the mature markets such as that of the United States. US isn't a fan of Blackberry and the response is lukewarm but there is a small dedicated community of users that cares about security and appreciates the idea of physical keyboard.

This news of Blackberry shutting down it's designing units is not surprising the audiences or the experts much, since the ordeal faced by the company to survive in a market dominated by bigshots, Apple and Samsung has not been under covers.