Last Tuesday, devices running the BlackBerry OS essentially became retro paperweights, losing core features such as calling, texting, and accessing cellular data

Since BlackBerry-branded devices have been running Android since 2015, this likely did not affect many of our readers, but the renewed interest raised an interesting question

At the time, OnwardMobility, the new administrator of the BlackBerry license, said that devices with keyboards would appear in the first half of 2021, and as the clock approached midnight on December 31, the company's official website still had the "coming 2021 labeled "coming 2021

Obviously, that deadline was not met, but the sudden media coverage of the missing device woke OnwardMobility from its slumber and the company issued an official statement The new BlackBerry 5G is yet to appear

"To those of you who have patiently waited a long time for an update from OnwardMobility, we humbly recognize that as we enter the year 2022, we owe it to you in some way," the company wrote in a blog post And, as many do, to misquote Mark Twain, "Contrary to popular belief, we are not dead"

No prizes for guessing why the deadline was missed: it was all due to the "difficult" situation in 2021 that led to "various delays" However, the company assures readers that it still plans to bring an "ultra-secure 5G enterprise smartphone" with a keyboard to market

While the word "BlackBerry" does not appear in this post, the name and brand name still appear on the website In any case, more details will be revealed soon; OnwardMobility promises "regular updates," with the first update expected sometime this month

Despite the headline admitting the elephant in the room is a fairly positive blog post: most assumed another BlackBerry revival was dead in the water However, despite the upbeat tone, it is unlikely that a 5G BlackBerry will make significant inroads anytime soon

There are a number of reasons for this, but the main one is that the smartphone market is so competitive that even established companies are struggling to break out of single digits in sales share; Sony has barely registered, HTC is essentially out of the cell phone game, and LG has aggressively and no longer exiting parts of its business that cannot be justified

Onward Mobility is not the first company to license BlackBerry, and TCL Communications has released a number of BlackBerry-branded devices, from the KeyOne in 2017 to the Key2 LE in 2018 The license agreement expires in 2020, and the fact that TCL was in no hurry to renew it speaks volumes

Of course, this does not mean that BlackBerry cannot rise again in the right hands, but the omens do not look good Samsung has been making BlackBerry-style cases with physical keyboards for Galaxy S smartphones for some time The company has not worked on this product line since the Galaxy S8, and the most likely reason for that is lack of interest

We hope to be proven wrong, but we would not recommend putting money on BlackBerry becoming relevant again in 2022