Baystreet Staff
It’s the end of an era as BlackBerry (BB) officially ends its mobile phone service today (January 4).
The Waterloo, Ontario-based technology company says it is decommissioning services for its BlackBerry 7.1 OS, BlackBerry 10, and BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.1.
The decommissioning means devices running these legacy services and software through either carrier or Wi-Fi connections will no longer have reliable data, phone call, text message, or 9-1-1 functionality.
The company said the decommissioning will not impact BlackBerry devices running on Android software.
BlackBerry first announced it would end services for many of its devices in 2020, as part of its transition away from producing smart phones and toward being a software development company.
BlackBerry phones were popular in the late 1990s and 2000s but fell behind and lost users to Apple's (AAPL) iPhone products and various Android-enabled devices.
