BlackBerry will stop manufacturing or designing its smartphones
 

Buried within this quarterly report from BlackBerry, is this bullet point under "Q2 Highlights":

And in the Q2 Results, the CEO says:

So, like Nokia they'll just be -- um -- writing quarterly reports instead of making phones. They've sure fallen a long way since the days they called BlackBerries "CrackBerries" because of their addictive nature, and we used such terms as "BlackBerry Prayer" for the posture users took in meetings when they were looking down at their screens just below the conference table instead of doing whatever business people are supposed to be pretending to do in meetings.

Re: BlackBerry will stop manufacturing or designing its smartphones
 

There were quite a few devs here who left after Elopcalypse to go to develop for the Blackberry 10 OS. Wonder how they're feeling now, abandoned yet again.

Very sad day. Personally, I never understood the love for Blackberry, but many did and they provided an alternative. With them gone, there is no longer an option to buy a smartphone with a qwerty keyboard.

Re: BlackBerry will stop manufacturing or designing its smartphones
 

Well, their outsourced Android devices would probably continue to have keyboards.

Re: BlackBerry will stop manufacturing or designing its smartphones
 

Only 1/3 of blackberry's revenue is making hardware these days. New strategy will be to sell software/services.

Re: BlackBerry will stop manufacturing or designing its smartphones
 

I don't think so. It was the internal Blackberry hardware team that made their devices with physical keyboards. No reference designs exist in China for keyboard devices, and I can't see anyone bothering to make one either. If we ever see a new Blackberry, it'll probably be a nasty cheapo yoke from Shenzhen with no keyboard.

Re: BlackBerry will stop manufacturing or designing its smartphones
 

As much as it would perhaps excite some portion of the membership here if that were true, most of their next designs seem to be of the standard-fare keyboardless variety.

Re: BlackBerry will stop manufacturing or designing its smartphones
 

Well... damn. Guess I need to rescind my prior comment. Looks like BlackBerry will continue to release devices with physical keyboards after all... Bundyo, buy lottery tickets. NOW.

Re: BlackBerry will stop manufacturing or designing its smartphones
 

That's nice, but why is that keyboard vertical? :confused::confused::confused:

Re: BlackBerry will stop manufacturing or designing its smartphones
 

Are you not aware of the BlackBerry Priv?

Re: BlackBerry will stop manufacturing or designing its smartphones
 

I am. The question stands.