BlackBerry plans to move away from developing its own devices and reposition itself as an enterprise software player, but CEO John Chen confirmed it has one more “in-house phone” on the way.

“We have one keyboard phone I promised people… It’s coming,” he told Bloomberg, adding that he couldn’t say when it would launch, but “it will not be that long”.

It will have the company’s trademark physical keyboard which was one of the most popular features of its traditional devices.

Chen had hinted at the phone in September, but hadn’t confirmed it until now.

In September BlackBerry said it would end its device hardware activities, having failed to secure a future for the business in the smartphone market.

The news at the time did not come as much of a surprise: Chen said that while efforts were being made to restore the business to profitability, it was not a sacred cow – and the numbers have shown no evidence that an improvement was on the cards.

Last month, BlackBerry unveiled its Dtek60 smartphone, with the hardware manufactured by TCL.