Just a couple of months ago, BlackBerry announced that they will stop making phones themselves and would rather partner with other manufacturers to design and build the future BlackBerrys.

Today, it was announced that global rights of BlackBerry name have been sold to TCL of China, which also makes smartphones by the name of TCL as well as Alcatel.

It merits mentioning here that recent BlackBerry DTEK50 and DTEK60 were also slight variations of Alcatel phones. Now TCL is licensed to use the BlackBerry name, logo, and brand assets and it will produce, market, and sell BlackBerry branded phones, as well as provide customer support for these devices.

The Canadian Firm will now make Software

So, what would happen to the actual BlackBerry that was once a big deal? In 2009, the company held 20 percent of the global smartphone market that shrunk to 0.1 percent in 2016.

Well BlackBerry has clearly failed to compete with iPhone and Androids, but still there is a minor percentage of loyal customers, that trust the secure services once provided by BlackBerry. As hinted earlier the Canadian firm will shift its focus towards software development, especially for enterprise; people who are looking for security solutions.

TCL will put Android on Future Phones

This deal with TCL doesn’t cover BlackBerry’s operations in some countries but the BlackBerry we used to know is officially dead now. What does TCL plan to do with it remains unclear for now, however the future phones of BlackBerry made by TCL would be using Android for sure.