Research In Motion (RIM) has announced that its first BlackBerry 10 smartphone will not support its trademark QWERTY keyboards.
RIM spokeswoman Rebecca Freiburger, speaking to the Washington Post, on Friday, said that the BlackBerry 10 will come with keyboard devices in future, but declined to say when.
BlackBerry handsets, which are traditionally known to be the best for messaging and composing emails because of the presence of a physical keyboard, will now drop the feature that used to separate it from its rivals including Apple and Android-based smartphones. In past also, the company's attempt to offer touch-only phones could never fly high.
According to analyst Colin Gillis of BGC Financial, "The physical keyboard is the most dominant item that separates out Research In Motion from its competitors."
"If you are not playing to your historical strengths you may find it more difficult to get traction," Gills told Washington Post.
Meanwhile, the developer alpha unit in May unveiled a touch-only design for a BlackBerry 10 phone at the annual BlackBerry World event between May 1 and 3.
The phone had 4.2-inch 1280x768px display, 1GB RAM, 16GB internal storage, a microSD expansion slot and a mini-HDMI port and a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, 3.5mm headphone jack, power key and mic.
RIM, however, has still not indicated as to when they will make the new BB10 handsets available.
