BlackBerry’s new five year partnership with Foxconn, announced the same day that it announced a US$4.4 billion loss in its latest quarter, has claimed two casualties. The deal will see Foxconn take on a role in both the development, manufacturing and supply management of entry-level BlackBerry devices intended for emerging markets where BlackBerry remains popular. As a result of this new partnership, BlackBerry has decided to “cancel plans to launch two devices to mitigate the identified inventory risk” according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal‘s Digits has learned that the two devices were codenamed Café (also known as the C-Series) and Kopi which would have come with a physical QWERTY keyboard. In fact, the BlackBerry Cafe was rumoured to be a number of variants, codenamed Americano, Cappuccino, Kopi and Latte. It’s likely that all have been canceled. At the same time, it will continue to work on two high-end devices codenamed Ontario and Windermere. These could well be among the last devices to be designed in-house as BlackBerry CEO John Chen said last week that he could see Foxconn taking over design of all its smartphones in the future.
Foxconn is already working on its own entry-level BlackBerry device. Codenamed Jakarta, this 3G-only BlackBerry 10 smartphone is expected to launch around April in Indonesia and other emerging markets. Whether it will incorporate the work done on the Cafe and Kopi smartphones in its own design remains to be seen.
BlackBerry has struggled to sell its new BlackBerry 10 devices since they went on sale early this year. Sales of the BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry Q10 have been weak and have forced BlackBerry to write down around $2.6 billion in unsold inventory this year alone (explaining much of its recent losses).
Source : Digits