BlackBerry pulls life support for once-indispensable business smartphone – Hardware

BlackBerry is pulling the plug on support for its at the time ubiquitous organization smartphones, which had been toted by executives, politicians and legions of supporters in the early 2000s.

The shift marks the finish of an era as the phones, which sported a little QWERTY bodily keyboard, pioneered force electronic mail and the BBM immediate messaging support.

Former US President Barack Obama, one particular of its most celebrated end users, made headlines in 2016 when he was requested to give up his BlackBerry and swap it with an unnamed smartphone.

Blackberry missing favour with end users with the arrival of Apple’s touchscreen iPhones and rival Android gadgets.

In current many years, the company pivoted to generating cyber protection software and embedded functioning devices for autos.

Social media was alight with tributes. Just one Twitter person reminisced it was a “fabulous machine” and hoped the firm’s phones would be resurrected.

In a doc printed in 2020, the company claimed it would get methods to decommission legacy expert services for BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry OS functioning devices and included gadgets operating on them would no extended be supported and may possibly not be able to receive or ship details, make cell phone phone calls or ship messages reliably.

A US choose on Monday turned down the firm’s bid to dismiss a lawsuit declaring it defrauded shareholders by inflating the good results and profitability of smartphones using BlackBerry 10 OS, and claimed the course-motion situation could go to demo this fall.