Blackberry stops making phones, sells license to TCL

Days ago the news broke that HMD will now be in charge of  manufacturing Nokia phones, now Blackberry will be doing the same. It is handing over its production into the hand of TCL, a Chinese handset manufacturer. This announcement doesn’t come as a shock to most of us because everybody knows that, like Nokia, Blackberry hasn’t been able to catch up with the trend in the smartphone market.

And with this license given to TCL, the company will be manufacturing all Blackberry phones globally expect in India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. A manufacturing deal has been struck with local manufacturers in those countries.

Moreover, TCL is not new to Blackberry; the company manufactured the last two android-based Blackberry phones–the Blackberry DTEK50 and DTEK60–but that was under a contract.

Alcatel revived by TCL

TCL has a reputation of reviving failing brand and perhaps that’s the reason Blackberry is selling its license to it. TCL revived Alcatel in its trouble years and now Alcatel is the fourth most popular phone brand in North America.

While TCL will manufacture the Blackberry phones to come, Blackberry itself will handle development of security software and other useful suites for the future phones. Under this new manufacturer, all new Blackberry phones to come will run on Android OS.