Let’s start off with a refresher. Back on December 21st 2016, we published the article titled “BlackBerry & TCL Communications Enter Long-Term Licensing Agreement”. But today, that long-term licensing agreement has a deadline. 31st August 2020 is the last day that TCL will be manufacturing and selling BlackBerry smartphones. Essentially, TCL is breaking up with BlackBerry.
In that agreement, BlackBerry phones were exclusively made by TCL. Seems good, as BlackBerry can focus on the software only while the hardware is essentially leased out. Seems great as there were many other smartphone manufacturers in the market and BlackBerry was having a hard time.
A tweet was meet by the official BlackBerry Mobile account which posted this essay:
The announcement is done ahead of time so that customers who have a BlackBerry phone now don’t have to panic when it happens.
But BlackBerry has another issue to sort out – to find an alternative manufacturer, to put it bluntly. I’m kind of having a hunch that maybe BBK Electronics, the house of many big Chinese smartphone brands, will be taking in BlackBerry too.
In Malaysia, I personally have never seen anyone using a BlackBerry phone or have seen one available for sale in stores. Perhaps a major shift is needed – but that will presumably take years to build.
Another coincidence is that TCL Communications is now manufacturing smartphones under its own brand name, as reported by The Verge. The company showed off its own foldable smartphone too.
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