BlackBerry Stops Making Phones, Licenses the BlackBerry Name To TCL For Android Phones (pcworld.com)

The BlackBerry smartphone is dead: Long live the BlackBerry smartphone. From a report on PCWorld: A week after it officially pulled out of the smartphone market, BlackBerry has agreed to license its brand to handset manufacturer TCL. The Chinese company will make and market future BlackBerry handsets worldwide except for India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, where BlackBerry has already struck local licensing deals. This is hardly new territory for TCL, which manufactured BlackBerry's last two handsets, the Android-based DTEK50 and DTEK60. BlackBerry has taken a more direct route out of the handset manufacturing business than Nokia, another of the marquee phone brands of the early years of this century. When Nokia sold its smartphone business to Microsoft, it also gave that company the right to use the Nokia brand for a transitional period. When Nokia got its name back earlier this year, it promptly granted a 10-year license to HMD Global, a Finnish company, to use its name on new phones.

Comments

license their name, make nothing but money

[bsDaemon]

and not even as much of it as they let on.

Are they the Donald Trump of phone vendors now?

Re:license their name, make nothing but money

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

It's an analogy to Trump University.

When Trump U got sued as frauds, and Donald was asked what he knew about it, he said he only licensed his name to them, and was not involved in the operation or the content.

Analogous to the Blackberry and TCL relationship. Get it?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[Captain Splendid]

Die, you misbegotten fucking idiots, die!

Seriously though, they'll be using BB as a textbook example of how to completely miss an emerging market for decades to come.

Re:HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[The-Ixian]

BB has made several acquisitions over the years which will probably continue to bring in money.

They just aren't in the consumer market so much anymore.

QNX is in automobiles including Fords, Good technology is used heavily in governments around the world and, I am sure, they have a raft of IP that they can still license/litigate out.

I hope it stays true, but doubt it.

[wjcofkc]

I have a Priv and I love it. While I typically shun Android interfaces that are not stock, the Priv's above and beyond not stock is something I really love. The security on the phone is top notch, but I don't see trusting that going all out Chinese. It will be interesting to see what TCL churns out, but I don't think it will be the Blackberry devices I know. It is too bad BB10 flopped, it was actually really great and would have made a great third competitor if their name was not already mud by the time it came out (I own a classic and still sometimes swap sims). Then there was the Canada thing.

Too bad

[lawaetf1]

The BB10 OS was a delight to use. Imagine being able to peak into your inbox no matter which app you have running? I have a Priv now and while I like it (especially the trackpad feature) I still miss the old OS.

Maybe TCL will make an Android Bold?

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

As a salesman, I sorely miss the physical keyboard. For those of us who need to quickly bang out good looking, professional emails, I have not found a single touch-screen keyboard that holds a candle to the physical keyboards of the classic BlackBerry phones, especially the Bold 9900. I had to add back in to my sig "sent from my phone" because of the persistent typos.

Re:Maybe TCL will make an Android Bold?

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

Right, which is why it takes considerably longer to type the same email, as I was indicating with the word "quickly". By my estimate, it takes up to five times longer to send a reply on touchscreen than on BlackBerry keyboard, with the biggest time waster coming from the pathetic editing interface that's used for, you know, corrections from proofreading. The sig entry coming because there are still problems. Nothing sloppy about it - respond to 100 emails a day on your touch screen and guess what happens despite proofreading? Stupid spelling errors, and I long ago turned off autocorrect because it never seems to know what word I'm actually trying to type.

Re:No surprise really, I have a PRIV, and it's cra

[acoustix]

I have a Priv and it works well for me. But I really miss the BB10 OS on my Z10. It was solid, fast and secure.