BlackBerry CEO: our future devices will ‘predominantly’ have hardware keyboards
An excellent keyboard was Blackberry's original claim to fame. But after a couple years focusing on software keyboards with devices like the Z10 and Z30, the company is now looking back to its bread and butter — however outdated — as inspiration.
Context & Ripple Effects
This commitment lands weeks into John Chen's turnaround plan: since late December 2013 he has cancelled two unreleased handsets after weak sales, signed an outsourcing deal with Foxconn for budget devices, and staked the company on [[a:/entity/blackberry|enterprise services]] and QNX rather than consumer handset volume. The all-touchscreen Z10 and Z30 were the emblem of the losing bet — BlackBerry chasing the slab form factor on rivals' terms.
Days before this statement, BlackBerry sued Typo Products over its keyboard accessory, so the CEO's 'predominantly hardware keyboards' line reads as a coherent repositioning around the one asset the lawsuit treats as worth defending: the physical QWERTY that made the brand.
First-order effects
- BlackBerry's product roadmap pivots back to physical keyboards as the default, ending the software-keyboard-first era defined by the Z10 and Z30.
- The Typo lawsuit and this pledge together signal BlackBerry will actively defend its keyboard identity — legally against imitators and strategically in its own lineup.
Second-order effects
- The Foxconn manufacturing deal becomes the vehicle for cheap keyboard-equipped handsets, letting BlackBerry serve loyalists at price points it could not hit building in-house.
- Accessory makers like Typo face both legal suppression and a diminished reason to exist, since the original vendor is recommitting to the form factor they were filling in for.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, BlackBerry completes its shift from mass-market smartphone maker to a niche hardware-and-security brand attached to an enterprise services business — a template for small players surviving platform duopolies by owning a differentiated input method rather than competing on specs.
The trend: As touchscreen smartphones converged on a single slab design, laggards like BlackBerry are retreating to signature hardware differentiators — the keyboard — bundled with enterprise services to carve out a defensible niche.