Services for classic BlackBerry devices ends Tuesday
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada-based cybersecurity firm BlackBerry Ltd will discontinue support for its classic hardware devices on Tuesday, January 4, 2022, the company has confirmed.
“As a reminder, the legacy services for BlackBerry 7.1 OS and earlier, BlackBerry 10 software, BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.1 and earlier versions, will no longer be available after January 4, 2022. As of this date, devices running these legacy services and software through either carrier or Wi-Fi connections will no longer reliably function, including for data, phone calls, SMS and 9-1-1 functionality,” said the company.
This termination of service affects all customers who are using legacy devices running BlackBerry 10, BlackBerry 7.1 OS and earlier and BlackBerry PlayBook 2.1 OS and earlier software and related services, said the company, as well as customers with BlackBerry hosted email addresses, or receiving redirected mail sent to a BlackBerry hosted email address on other platforms, including iOS, Android and BlackBerry Android. Also affected are enterprise customers assigned an Enhanced Sim Based License (ESBL) or Identity Based License (IBL) on any iOS or Android devices, including BlackBerry Android devices.
The announcement originally came at the end of September. So this shouldn’t be news to anyone still hanging on to their legacy devices. But It’s a sad, and perhaps inevitable, epitaph for the once-hallowed “CrackBerry,” named so for the relentlessly addictive allure it once had over its acolytes.
BlackBerries were once the cachet of jet-setting celebrities and high-powered, c-level executives. All in an era before social media influencers flexed Swarovski-encrusted solid gold iPhones for clout. BlackBerries became the standard issue for countless corporate staff who needed to stay on top of email while they were mobile. We take it for granted in 2021, but it was a novelty — and a business differentiator — at a time when 3G ruled the mobile airwaves.
With their thumb keyboards and scrolling wheels (later trackballs), Research In Motion (RIM), as it was then known, made devices that enabled an early generation of mobile users. But the high cost of 3G data plans and un-trivial setup process kept almost anyone without a corporate expense account and an IT department from using them.
RIM dominated the nascent smartphone business until Apple and Google toppled it. RIM failed to respond quickly in the face of rapidly changing market conditions. Consumer demand surged, touchscreen interfaces became de rigueur and developers migrated to platforms they could more easily monetize. Within a few years RIM saw marketshare and influence erode.
The company unsuccessfully pivoted to Android-based devices running its own software stack. Ultimately, however, BlackBerry has found new success as a software developer specializing in cybersecurity for enterprise. It features unified endpoint security for IOT, embedded systems, automotive technology and other verticals.
