Blackberry to Stop Making Phones
WILL RIPLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The signs of devastation still remain as a community tries to move on. In April this year, two earthquakes -- a 6.2 and then a 7.0, hit Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, within just a few days.</s>RYOTA KIOKORO: You have to have a lot of other experts involved to really plan for disasters. So, post-disaster. OK, we survived it. Most people survived. What happens when your whole infrastructure is devastated? How do we get people home?</s>RIPLEY: Home, it's what so many people here lost and what 2014 Pitzker prize-winning architect Shigeru Ban (ph) is trying to rebuild.</s>SHIGERU BAN, ARCHITECT: I think the victim has had terrible experiences, mentally and physically. They must move into somewhere comfortable.</s>RIPLEY: With the warmth of natural wood and a flood of sunlight, Ban's temporary houses are able to bring dignity to disaster.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): I was expecting metal doors and cold material when we moved into the temporaryhousing, but it was all built by wood. It was beyond my expectation. I was crying when I got in here. I was happy to be able to live in a place like this.</s>RIPLEY: His approach with each project is to utilize readily available materials while creating designs that volunteers can easily build. Using prefabricated wooden panels, Ban and his volunteers have been able to construct ten new homes.</s>BAN (through translator): Humans need to eat, but we also need a place to stay to make a step forward. Because we have a place to live, we can make a step forward to the future.</s>RIPLEY: For Ban, he will leave the future of his temporary buildings up to the people who use them.</s>BAN: Many of the commercial buildings made by developers to make money in concrete, very temporary because some other developer buys the land and destroy the building with a new one. So, even the concrete building can be very temporary as long as the buildings are made to make money. But even the building as long as people love it, it becomes permanent.</s>LU STOUT: Now, it is the end of an era for Blackberry. The company will no longer make its own phones. Instead, it says in future, partners in Asia, including a new Indonesian joint venture, will make smartphones with the Blackberry name. Now, the company insists that there will continue to be Blackberry branded devices and Blackberry will continue to design, develop, and manage the software running on those devices. Now, this was once a common site: a business executive glued to his Blackberry. The devices were, of course, nicknamed Crackberries. They were among the first smartphones to catch on with regular users thanks to that iconic design that included a physical QWERTY keyboard. In a time before touch screens, this was an easy way to type out detailed messages on the go and it enjoyed a high profile, thanks to famous fans like President Obama. For a time, it was the go-to handset for executives, politicians, celebrities. And it wasn't just about email. Blackberry Messenger, or BBM, attracted a huge fan base of younger users. It was WhatsApp before WhatsApp. Now, the phones are undoubtedly Blackberry's most iconic products. So what's next for the company? Now, as we said earlier, it will still provide software for phones made by other partners, but we haven't seen those devices yet. There's also security. Blackberry security is well regarded. Blackberry said in a statement, this move will let it focus all efforts on providing state of the art security software for devices and the enterprise of things. And that covers a range of services from setting up secure communication systems for the U.S. government to developing security systems in cars. And that is News Stream. I'm Kristie Lu Stout. But don't go anywhere. World Sport with Alex Thomas is next. END