Lagging Sales Get BlackBerry Phones The Boot From T-Mobile Stores

It’s no secret that BlackBerry as a company is a shadow of its former self, but things are getting objectively, measurably worse. Days after the company announced that it’s expecting a $950 million to $990 million loss in its Q4 earnings report and will likely have to cut up to 4,500 jobs in the coming months, T-Mobile let leak plans to stop selling the company’s handsets in its stores.

T-Mobile will still sell BlackBerry devices, such as the BlackBerry Z10, Z30, and 9720, but it will ship the handsets directly to consumers instead of keeping physical stock. T-Mobile executive VP for corporate services told Reuters that due to low consumer demand for BlackBerry phones, "keeping stock in the retail distribution system was inefficient". Ouch.

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins
BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins

Of course, that’s partly because BlackBerry biggest sales are in the enterprise space and thus most purchases aren’t made by individuals at a store, but the situation does highlight the fact that average consumers just aren’t all that interested in BlackBerrys these days. iPhones and Android devices are completely dominating the mobile space; even Microsoft’s struggling Windows Phone platform has a larger market share than BlackBerry.

BlackBerry Z10
BlackBerry Z10

Oh BlackBerry, ye of yesteryear’s dominance. How the mighty have fallen. Sunrise, sunset.