The BlackBerry Classic, held by CEO John Chen, restores familiar features like the ‘belt’ – a row of four physical keys for calls, accessing menus and going back one step, that had disappeared from the Q10.MARK BLINCH/Reuters
T-Mobile US Inc. will start selling BlackBerry Ltd.'s Classic phone, marking a rekindled partnership that ended a year ago after a spat over iPhone promotions.
After listening to customers, T-Mobile Chief Executive Officer John Legere said starting Wednesday BlackBerry will be reinstalled as a supplier, according to a statement.
BlackBerry CEO John Chen stopped supplying T-Mobile phones after the carrier ran ads encouraging subscribers to trade in BlackBerrys for Apple Inc.'s iPhones. T-Mobile had been BlackBerry's longest-running U.S. partner, and the promotions were received as a gut punch at the time.
The separation marked a low point for Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry, whose smartphone market share has slumped to less than 1 per cent. A year earlier, the company alienated its qwerty-keyboard loyalists when previous CEO Thorsten Heins moved to touchscreen keypads in an effort to compete more directly with Apple and phones using Google Inc.'s Android software.
Last year, Chen returned the company to its business-user roots with the introduction of a keyboard-equipped throwback– style BlackBerry Classic. The CEO has also been cutting costs and focusing his turnaround plan on increasing software sales.
With assistance from Gerrit De Vynck in Toronto.