[anon(10321802)]

5 years ago, the very existence of BlackBerry as a company and brand was in jeopardy. John Chen was only 6 months into the execution of his turnaround strategy, which would take years to bear fruit, and we were still witnessing the consequences of poor management prior to Chen's hire: a dying hardware business, massive writedowns, layoffs, selling off properties, etc.

Yet here we are 5 years later. BlackBerry Ltd. has pivoted to become a billion-dollar software company (which it already was, it just didn't know it at the time) with an extremely bright future ahead. And TCL (and others) thought enough of the BlackBerry brand to license their handset tech and take a shot at continuing the BlackBerry hardware legacy. I have no doubt that BlackBerry Ltd. would have achieved billion-dollar status again with or without the handset licensing deals.

From a "gadget geek" perspective, the fact that we can still purchase "new" retail BlackBerry devices today is awesome. Whether or not we will still be able to purchase a new BlackBerry 5 years from now, I'm just enjoying the ride and very happy it's lasted this long.

I sincerely hope TCL will keep going with their BlackBerry Mobile venture and that we will see new, exciting devices from them in the future. The KEY2 is a huge improvement over the KEYone - it's proof they listen to their customers and really do want to produce a device worthy of the BlackBerry legacy. So I have no doubt that if they wanted to release a KEY3 - or whatever they choose to call it - it would be a worthy and improved successor to the KEY2.

The fact that BlackBerry Mobile is still around, still marketing their devices, and that we are still here talking about them means there's still hope!

So let's enjoy the ride and show our BlackBerry pride, eh?

[Emaderton3]

5 years ago, the very existence of BlackBerry as a company and brand was in jeopardy. John Chen was only 6 months into the execution of his turnaround strategy, which would take years to bear fruit, and we were still witnessing the consequences of poor management prior to Chen's hire: a dying hardware business, massive writedowns, layoffs, selling off properties, etc.

Yet here we are 5 years later. BlackBerry Ltd. has pivoted to become a billion-dollar software company (which it already was, it just didn't know it at the time) with an extremely bright future ahead. And TCL (and others) thought enough of the BlackBerry brand to license their handset tech and take a shot at continuing the BlackBerry hardware legacy. I have no doubt that BlackBerry Ltd. would have achieved billion-dollar status again with or without the handset licensing deals.

From a "gadget geek" perspective, the fact that we can still purchase "new" retail BlackBerry devices today is awesome. Whether or not we will still be able to purchase a new BlackBerry 5 years from now, I'm just enjoying the ride and very happy it's lasted this long.

I sincerely hope TCL will keep going with their BlackBerry Mobile venture and that we will see new, exciting devices from them in the future. The KEY2 is a huge improvement over the KEYone - it's proof they listen to their customers and really do want to produce a device worthy of the BlackBerry legacy. So I have no doubt that if they wanted to release a KEY3 - or whatever they choose to call it - it would be a worthy and improved successor to the KEY2.

The fact that BlackBerry Mobile is still around, still marketing their devices, and that we are still here talking about them means there's still hope!

So let's enjoy the ride and show our BlackBerry pride, eh?

Let's wait until it is actually out before the hoorays!