BlackBerry plans to stop making its own phones 


Blackberry is to stop designing smartphones in-house after 14 years, the company has announced.

Once a market leader, the company has struggled to keep pace with modern handsets produced by rivals such as Apple and Samsung.

In May, the company's chief executive, John Chen, said he would know by September whether the hardware business was likely to become profitable.

The company has not yet confirmed when any further Blackberry phones will be released, but Mr Chen said last Wednesday that further devices including one with the "iconic" physical keyboard would go on sale.

In October 2015, Blackberry changed the direction of its handset business by producing its first smartphone running Google's Android operating system, rather than its own BB10 software.

However, Mr Chen has admitted the device, which featured a slide-out physical keyboard, was too expensive to appeal to a mass market.

The company has since launched a less expensive touchscreen-only Android handset, based on a phone released by Alcatel owner TCL.

SOURCE: BBC News