Services and repair work for the once one of its king business smartphones that were proudly exhibited by executives, politicians and millions of its fans worldwide in the early 2000s is being finally brought to an end by BlackBerry Ltd.

This announcement heralded the end of an era as the concept of email and the BBM instant messaging service was pioneered into the phones that had a tiny QWERTY physical keyboard.

One of the most celebrated users of the Blackberry phones was the former US President Barack Obama, who in 2016 made headlines when he was requested to give up the phone and get it replaced by an unnamed smartphone.

With the advent of Apple’s touchscreen iPhones and rival Android devices, Blackberry lost its popularity among users. The company has in recent years shifted its business focus to the development of cybersecurity software and embedded operating systems for cars.

Users of social media bid adieu to the phone.  

One user on Twitter remembered the Blackberry phone as a “fabulous machine” and hoped that the company would resurrect those phones.

Its decision to implement steps to phase out and decommission legacy services for BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry OS operating systems was noted by the company in a document published in 2020. It also reportedly said that there would no longer be support for devices running on them and such devices would perhaps no longer be able to receive or send data, make phone calls or send messages in a reliable manner.

On Monday however, a judge in the United States denied conceding to an appeal by the company to a lawsuit in which the company was accused of defrauding its shareholders by presenting inflated success figures and data about the profitability of smartphones that used its BlackBerry 10 OS. The judge said that the class-action case could go to trial this fall.

(Adapted from NDTV.com)