When BlackBerry and TCL announced that their partnership will be terminated on 31 August 2020, some believe that would finally mark the end of BlackBerry phones. As it turns out, a US company called OnwardMobility has chosen to take over the mantle from TCL.
The company earlier today has announced that it has received the rights from BlackBerry to plan, develop and release brand-new BlackBerry devices. OnwardMobility is targeting to release the first model within the first half of 2021.
Not much information was revealed about the new phone in today’s announcement. However, OnwardMobility did say that the new BlackBerry phone will come with a physical keyboard and supports 5G network.
In the same announcement, the company also revealed that these new BlackBerry phones will be designed and manufactured by FIH Mobile. A well-known name within the industry, the Foxconn subsidiary has a similar deal with plenty of clients throughout the world including the current rights’ holder for Nokia phones, HMD Global.
It is not known whether OnwardMobility will release these upcoming BlackBerry devices globally though as only North American and European markets were mentioned in today’s announcement. Nevertheless, we are still eager to see how the next-generation BlackBerry phones are going to look like and if they could once again attract consumers back to the BlackBerry brand.
