Blackberry pulls the plug on once ubiquitous business phone

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Blackberry pulls the plug on once ubiquitous business phone

BlackBerry pulls life support for the once indispensible business phone Reuters -- BlackBerry Ltd is pulling the plug on service for its once ubiquitous business phones, which were toted by executives, politicians and legions of fans in the early 2000s.

The phones, which sported a tiny QWERTY physical keyboard, pioneered push email and the BBM instant messaging service.

In 2016, former U.S. President Barack Obama, one of its most celebrated users, made headlines when he was asked to give up his BlackBerry and replace it with an unnamed smartphone.

Blackberry lost favor with users due to the advent of Apple's touchscreen iPhones and rival Android devices. The company has been involved in making cybersecurity software and embedded operating systems for cars for the past few years.

There was a lot of tributes on social media. One Twitter user said it was a fabulous machine and hoped the company's phones would be resurrected.

In a document published in 2020, the company said that it would take steps to decommission legacy services for BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry OS operating systems, and that devices running on them would no longer be supported and may not be able to send or receive data, make phone calls or send messages reliably.

A U.S. judge rejected the company's bid to dismiss a lawsuit claiming it defrauded shareholders by inflating the success and profitability of smartphones using BlackBerry 10 OS, and said the class-action case could go to trial this fall.