The End Of An Era: BlackBerry Ends Support For Legacy Devices

If you’re one of the few people still using a BlackBerry Ltd BB device you’ll need to find a new smartphone. As of Jan. 4, the company will no longer be supporting its legacy devices, which will cause functionality problems.

What Happened: Long before the Apple Inc AAPL iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy dominated the smartphone market, BlackBerry devices were all the rage.

Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry will stop running legacy services for its BlackBerry 7.1 operating system and earlier BlackBerry 10 software, as well as its Playbook OS 2.1 and earlier versions.

Why It Matters: BlackBerry said users who attempt to use the legacy devices after today will find critical functions no longer working. “These devices will lack the ability to receive over the air provisioning updates and as such, this functionality will no longer be expected to reliably function, including for data, phone calls, SMS and 9-1-1 functionality,” the company announced. “Applications will also have limited functionality.”

BlackBerry's phones were once seen as cutting-edge technology in the late 1990s and early 2000s and became a status symbol for users. Former President Barack Obama was a well-known BlackBerry user, and he was even allowed to keep the device when he took office.

BlackBerry launched a new version of its operating system in 2013. The company transitioned to a security software focus under the name BlackBerry Limited in 2016.

BlackBerry stock was trading at $9.23 as of Tuesday morning, down 1.55% at publication.

Related Link: BlackBerry Stock Starts To Curl Higher: What's Next?

Photo by Randy Lu on Unsplash