Blackberry KeyOne release delayed due to overwhelming response
April 02, 2017 • Android • Blackberry • News
Chinese company TCL announced at the MWC in February that the BlackBerry KEYone will be available globally starting April, though they did not specify when. Disappointingly so, it seems that the release of the smartphone has been moved on further to May.
BlackBerry's CEO John Chen confirmed during the company's earning calls that the KEYOne will be in production at the end of April, which means it will not arrive in stores until after May.
"We just launched two phones, or we helped our partners launch two phones. One in Indonesia and that one is shipping already. The second one, that TCL announced at Mobile World Congress which is the physical keyboard on an Android, that one is not going to be slated to ship until probably the May timeframe. I think the first manufacturing production run is at the end of April. So the product looks pretty good, but the worldwide availability is going to be later than May."
It looks like the response of the new Blackberry KeyOne has been nothing short of overwhelming and what Blackberry/TCL would like to do is to ramp up production to prevent a stock out situation (like the Google Pixel).