The last hope for the BlackBerry 5G phone is dead: OnwardMobility is shutting down

If another confirmation was needed that we would not receive the 5G BlackBerry phone that OnwardMobility promised two years ago, the final nail in the coffin of this project came. The company that obtained the BlackBerry license after the brand split from Chinese manufacturer TCL, OnwardMobility, has officially announced that it is closing.

The company that was working on the BlackBerry 5G phone announced the closure

I already knew that BlackBerry no longer had any ambitions in the hardware market, preferring to sell the patents it still held in this field. In fact, rumors have been circulating that the license that BlackBerry had offered to OnwardMobility had been revoked, which made it impossible for the American company to launch a phone under this brand.

However, it seems that without the BlackBerry license, the company will no longer be able to operate to launch a smartphone based on the work done so far. However, the company’s representatives have not yet stated the reasons for this decision:

“We are announcing with great sadness that OnwardMobility will close and will no longer continue to develop an ultra-secure phone with a physical keyboard. This decision was not made in a hurry. Like you, we are disappointed with this situation and assure you that this is not the result we have been working for and hoping for. ”company representatives announced on .

In the last few years, a number of independent companies have launched various projects on crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter or Indiegogo, through which they have launched various models of smartphones with physical keyboards. It seems that there is a demand for such devices, but the audience is too small, and the disadvantages compared to traditional phones are not justified for the general public. Most people prefer phones with larger screens for content consumption than a permanent physical keyboard, which takes up space during use.

The last two BlackBerry phones, KeyONE and Key2, produced by TCL, did not sell very well, but in that case it was also a very high price for devices with average hardware specifications.

source: CNET