Chinese electronics company TCL Corp on Saturday showed off its first BlackBerry Ltd-licensed smartphone, which brings back the device’s signature physical keyboard as it seeks to revive the once mighty brand.
The KEYone phone has a larger screen than previous BlackBerry devices and a fast-charging battery as TCL sets its sights on businesses and tries to rekindle BlackBerry’s strong reputation for productivity and security.
TCL reached the brand-licensing deal in December last year after the Canadian company announced that it would halt in-house production of smartphones, marking the end of an era for the once-dominant tech firm.
Photo: Reuters
Under the agreement, BlackBerry remains in control of software and security on smartphones, while TCL will handle creating handsets powered by Google Android software.
Officials from both firms unveiled the KEYone in Barcelona ahead of today’s opening of the four-day Mobile World Congress (MWC), the world’s largest annual phone expo.
In the new BlackBerry phone the keyboard can be used for more than just typing.
The spacebar on the keyboard also doubles as a fingerprint sensor, while individual letter keys can be programmed as shortcuts to open specific apps.
The KEYone will go on sale around the globe in April at a cost of 599 euros (US$549).
“The new BlackBerry portfolio has a chance of success, because few companies now offer BlackBerry-style design and features, and the productivity-focused smartphone segment is underserved,” IHS senior director and head of the mobile and telecoms team Ian Fogg said.
“Even if BlackBerry’s smartphone share remains so low it is hard to quantify, the vast scale of the smartphone market — over 1.5 billion units will ship in 2017 — means even a tiny share would represent significant unit volumes and revenues,” he added.
TCL said it would be coming out with new BlackBerry products later this year.
“What we are unveiling today is just the beginning of a new story,” TCL chief executive Nicolas Zibell said.
Nokia Oyj is also attempting to make a comeback with new devices. It is reportedly set to reveal several new devices at the fair, including an updated version of its iconic 3310 phone.
However, Samsung Electronics Co, which had to discontinue its Galaxy Note 7 smartphone last year after several cases of the devices exploding, will not unveil any new phones at the congress.
With Samsung not unveiling a new phone, the rest of the industry will have a rare opportunity to grab the spotlight in Barcelona.
“Don’t expect innovation on smartphones’ hardware, but instead a focus on emerging technologies” like virtual reality and artificial intelligence, Forrester Research analyst Thomas Husson said.
With smartphone market saturated in key markets, the battle for profits is shifting away from the handset to other connected devices, analyst say.
“Unless we see a major new disruption similar to the one prompted by the iPhone’s arrival in 2007, we expect smartphone sales in Western Europe and North America to slowly decline after 2017,” CCS Insight analyst Jasdeep Badyal said.
Several new wearable products are expected to be unveiled in Barcelona as well as 360-degree cameras and connected objects.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day