Electronics company TCL Communication has announced on Monday that its partnership to manufacture BlackBerry smartphones has ended.
TCL Communication said the partnership has ended and it will stop selling BlackBerry mobile devices in August. In a Twitter statement, the company said it will no longer hold the rights to "design, manufacture or sell" any new Blackberry devices.
Although it will halt manufacturing the devices, TCL will continue providing support for existing devices with customer and warranty service until 2022. It is unclear whether BlackBerry will form a new partnership with another production company to continue selling the devices.
In the statement, TCL said: "For those of us at TCL Communication who were blessed enough to work on BlackBerry Mobile, we want to thank all our partners, customers and the BlackBerry fan community for their support over these past few years."
Under its partnership with BlackBerry, TCL produced the KEY series smartphones, including the BlackBerry KEYonne Motion, KEY2 and KEY2 LE. BlackBerry devices have been praised not only for its keyboards but also for the company's security features.
BlackBerry focuses elsewhere
While the news might be considered a loss for keyboard-loving smartphone users, BlackBerry no longer relies on mobile devices sales for a large part of its business. The company stopped its own production in 2016 and outsourced it to partners, such as TCL.
The company decided to do this due to falling sales figures for its devices as the market becomes more saturated. BlackBerry was also slow to adopt the touchscreen, causing it to lose out to Apple, Samsung, and other Android devices.
It decided to shift its business focus to software, particularly for cybersecurity and "Internet of Things" connected devices such as automobiles. While the company is still struggling to turn a profit in fiscal 2020, the strategy helped BlackBerry recover from the brink of bankruptcy several years ago, when investors were concerned about the company's survival.
