Blackberry has been pushing Blackberry 10 devices for the last one year and has been banking on its new platform to guide its resurgence and help it find its footing amongst consumers. However, as Blackberry’s share of the smartphone market has constantly remained under 1%, it looks like the ship that set sail in 2008 won’t be coming back for anyone left at the port any time soon.
Android and iOS remain the biggest and most popular mobile platforms in the world and there’s hardly space for anyone else. Where does that leave the likes of Blackberry? Nowhere to be honest and we are not shocked that inside reports indicate that the Waterloo-based company whose focus has shifted to the enterprise market lately may be throwing the towel altogether on its platform for a share of the Android pie.
According to a report from Reuters citing well-placed internal sources, Blackberry’s plans for its smartphones running Android may including bundling much of its proprietary features on the said smartphones with the key selling point being the BES12 security software it has also availed to other devices on competing platforms Windows, iOS and of course, Android itself. It will also be introducing its famed physical keyboard as the smartphones are said to include a full touchscreen and a slide-out keyboard. Remember pre-2011 days? Yeah, something like that.
Besides BES12, Blackberry already offers its popular secure messaging service BBM on Android, iOS and Windows Phone and this rumoured move to introduce an Android smartphone could be a way to showcase the best of Blackberry and raise awareness for its proprietary services or just one of the many measures the company is exploring as a means of staying visible on the customer front. Android is the most popular mobile operating system out there and it doesn’t hurt to want to piggyback on its success. Moreso when you’re a “burning platform”. Some guys already did that with their X phones as art of a strategy to add some oomph to their main platform.
