The fate of BlackBerry Mobile is uncertain (once again), and this time it is due to the manufacturer that kept the phones of the Canadian company, TCL  Communications , alive , who reported that it will stop selling BlackBerry devices as of August 31, 2020 . According to the press release, the official reason is because TCL no longer has the necessary rights and licenses to continue designing, manufacturing and selling mobile phones of the Canadian brand. However, it will continue to offer technical support and warranty for existing terminals until August 31, 2022. 

The end of an era for BlackBerry : BlackBerry and TCL divorce, the fate of BlackBerry Mobile is uncertain

Without TCL, BlackBerry could be relegated to oblivion once again (as far as the smartphone market is concerned). Since the company decided to stop making its mobiles in 2016 after many failures, TCL became its most important partner and, to be fair, the latter did a decent job combining classic BlackBerry styling with modern Android device features; although of course, none of his mobiles became a massive sales success. 

Now with TCL out of the picture, BlackBerry doesn’t have much choice left , either it re-builds its own devices or finds another partner to license its devices to. In this sense, the Canadian brand still has other partners, Optiemus  and BB  Merah Putih , but both companies have limited their market to India and Indonesia, respectively. On top of that, none of the aforementioned brands announced a mobile during 2019, which in hindsight was an indication that something was wrong.  

BlackBerry Key2 Red Edition, the company’s only mobile announced last year

None of the firms has offered further statements on the matter beyond what was expressed in the statement. However, it seems that both companies are heading in different paths, on the one hand, we have BlackBerry , which has made a transition from a smartphone manufacturer to a software and cybersecurity company . On the other hand, it seems that TCL is looking to concentrate on producing its own devices and gaining its own identity in the smartphone industry.