At the start of this year, the smartphone market was abuzz as OnwardMobility announced that it would be working on launching a 5G enabled BlackBerry smartphone. However, just a few weeks after, it was reported that the company lost the rights to the latter’s name. Now, this unfortunate news has officially been confirmed.
As per an official announcement, the company stated that “We want to thank you all for the tremendous amount of support that you have given us since we first launched OnwardMobility. However, it is with great sadness that we announce that OnwardMobility will be shutting down, and we will no longer be proceeding with the development of an ultra secure smartphone with a physical keyboard.” Simply put, the 5G BlackBerry phone project is officially dead.
The announcement arrives a mere six weeks after it first revealed its plans. So this arrives as unfortunate news for those looking forward to the promised BlackBerry experience. In our previous report, we had stated that BB has been working on distancing itself from its past. Meaning, there probably won’t be another BB phone for a long while, or maybe never at all. BlackBerry CEO John Chen had also changed his decision of having another OEM try and revive the brand by acquiring the license to its name. So this might really be the final nail to the coffin.
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