Click to Skip Ad
Closing in...

It looks like future BlackBerry phones will be for diehard fans only

Published Jan 7th, 2014 3:30PM EST
BlackBerry Future Smartphones QWERTY Keyboards

If you buy through a BGR link, we may earn an affiliate commission, helping support our expert product labs.

BlackBerry tried to make a big comeback in the consumer smartphone space with the BlackBerry Z10 touch screen device… and it flopped badly. Now that the company has waved the white flag in the high-end consumer smartphone market, it’s free to make devices that will appeal mostly to its remaining fans who don’t care about big touch displays and only want the comfort of a physical QWERTY keyboard. In an interview with Bloomberg, BlackBerry CEO John Chen renewed his company’s commitment to making keyboard-equipped smartphones and said that new devices designed by the company would be “predominantly” QWERTY-equipped phones. While this is music to the ears of BlackBerry diehards, it does suggest that BlackBerry only plans to design a limited number of devices targeted toward its corporate user base since consumers have repeatedly shown that they prefer full touch display phones to phones with QWERTY keyboards.

Brad Reed
Brad Reed Staff Writer

Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.