Blackberry hangs up the phone

BlackBerry KEYone. © BlackBerry.

Along with Windows Mobile and Nokia, BlackBerry was one of the heavyweights in mobile telephony before the iPhone disrupted the market in 2007. Unfortunately, like its two cohorts, BlackBerry was unable to withstand the competition and its market share steadily eroded. In 2015, the company abandoned the development of the BlackBerry operating system and launched into the Android world with the BlackBerry Priv. The following year, BlackBerry gave up developing phones altogether and permitted Chinese manufacturer TCL to produce phones under the BlackBerry license. The last diehard users of BlackBerry OS devices lost access to BlackBerry’s servers in early 2022 and were left with bricked devices.

In the last chapter of this sad industrial saga, BlackBerry announced the sale of its invaluable portfolio of patents in the field of mobile telephony for 600 million USD. The company says the patents relate to “mobile devices, messaging and wireless networking.” These are patents relating to BlackBerry phones, QWERTY keyboards and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). The buyer, Catapult, is a new company with a huge amount of debt from the purchase, no product, and no cash flow. Critics are wondering how the company will monetize BlackBerry patents to keep the story going. They may just be plotting to sue anyone it deems to be in violation of its newly acquired assets.

⇨ Ars Technica, Ron Amadeo, “BlackBerry sells mobile and messaging patents for $600 million.”

2022-02-02