14 DAY TRIAL // Canadian mobile phone maker BlackBerry has officially confirmed plans to bring to the market three new high-end smartphones in the next 18 months, all of which will pack QWERTY keyboards, it seems.
The info comes from a recent Reuters article and is said to have been provided by BlackBerry CEO John Chen himself.
No specific details on when each of these handsets is released have been provided as of now, but the company should offer specifics on each of them as they are ready to roll out.
According to the aforementioned article, John Chen also said that the handset vendor would focus mainly on keyboard-enabled devices moving forth. Apparently, BlackBerry engineers are already working on the development of these handsets.
No specific info on the hardware specs of the upcoming devices has been revealed as of now, yet chances are that at least one of them has been spotted in recent leaks, namely the BlackBerry Windermere.
This phone is said to arrive on the market sometime in 2015, with a screen capable of delivering a 1440 x 1440 pixels resolution. Chances are that it will be a 5-inch display, should previous reports on the matter pan out.
However, these three QWERTY phones are not the only new products in BlackBerry’s lineup, it appears, as the company is also aiming at releasing some affordable devices in the not too distant future.
One of them will be an LTE version of the BlackBerry Z3 smartphone. The vendor confirmed the new device iteration today, during the Q4 2014 FY earnings call, and should release it soon after the original lands on shelves in Indonesia in late April, crackberry notes.
What’s more is that BlackBerry also appears set to continue adding new products to the rather old BlackBerry 7 series.
Apparently, a new BB OS 7-powered Bold handset is planned for this year, mainly due to customer feedback. The company seems to have partnered with Wistron for the building of this phone.
The BlackBerry Q20 handset that was officially announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona but will be brought to the market only in Q4 this year will come as an evolution of the series, N4BB reports.
For those who missed the company’s announcement on this product, we should note that it will arrive on shelves with the classic ‘Menu,’ ‘Back,’ ‘Send’ and ‘End’ buttons, as well as with the integrated trackpad.
BlackBerry has lost a lot of market share in the past few years, but it seems that the company might have finally found the right recipe to turn back to profitability. Stay tuned to learn more on how things evolve for it.