The United States government recently said that they were not going to give the Senate staffers BlackBerry handsets anymore because the company had stopped making BB10 devices, as reported in various news outlets. An internal email which was received by Bomble noted that BlackBerry had informed some of the carriers in the US including Verizon and AT&T that it was not going to continue with the BlackBerry OS 10 devices production. This means that devices such as the Q10, Z10, Z30 Passport, and the Classic will not be produced by BlackBerry anymore.
The BB10 otherwise known as the BlackBerry OS 10 is part of BlackBerry’s very own mobile operating system that is used in handsets made by the Canadian-based smartphone maker.
The Canadian phone company was once viewed as the leader in the smartphone industry before the behemoths that are Apple, and Android-based smartphones came in and overtook them. After that, the company has had trouble keeping up with the competition, and its market share has gone down as a result since the turn of the decade. The company, however, managed to stay in the business by enticing its enterprise customers and decided to stop competing for the mass consumers like what other smartphone makers had been targeting.
However, the decision to stop the production of BB 10 based phones now means the company may be abandoning efforts to concentrate on their enterprise customers as they are now aiming to make Android-based phones such as the BlackBerry Priv. BlackBerry aims to use the Android operating system, which is owned by Google.
Last year the company launched the BlackBerry Priv for its customers, as the first commercially available smartphone with Android operating system. The phone was also made with a sliding physical keyboard keeping with BlackBerry tradition. This made it the first Android based phone with a sliding keyboard. Reports indicate that the company aims to release some more Android-based smartphones. The company is aiming to launch three Android-based smartphones for this year.
However after clarification with the company, it seems the decision to stop BB10 based devices is incorrect. After CrackBerry had reached out for comment on the email, the company said that the statement that had been sent about the discontinuation to Verizon and AT&T was incorrect. The company stated that it plans to continue making and improving its use of the BB10 operating system but at the same time they want to increase their use and production of Android-based devices.
The Canadian company also said that at the moment they were working on improving the current operating system by releasing the version 10.3.3. The update is expected to be released next month, and there is also another update expected later this year.
The smartphone maker might have denied discontinuing the BB10 based devices, but they did, however, confirm that they were stopping with the BlackBerry Classic devices. The company said they were simply changing their lineup, and it did not mean they would stop supporting their BB10 based devices.
