BlackBerry to Discontinue Traditional Keyboard Phone

Ian Austen, reporting for the NYT:

The struggling Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry made a sharp detour from its history on Tuesday when it announced it was discontinuing the last phone to have the traditional version of the company’s iconic physical keyboard and trackpad.

Then-CEO Mike Lazaridis, in May 2008:

“The most exciting mobile trend is full qwerty keyboards. I’m sorry, it really is. I’m not making this up.”

Another one:

“I couldn’t type on it and I still can’t type on it, and a lot of my friends can’t type on it,” says Mike Lazaridis, R.I.M.’s co-chief executive and technological visionary. “It’s hard to type on a piece of glass.”

★ Wednesday, 6 July 2016