AppleInsider Staff
The latest turnaround strategy for formerly-dominant smartphone maker BlackBerry is reportedly centered on mid-range Android devices, as the company will no longer manufacture new phones based on its own BlackBerry 10 operating system.
BlackBerry's change of direction comes after enterprise customers — the only remaining significant pocket of loyalty for the company — complained that its first Android entry was too expensive, CEO John Chen said this week. Chen admitted that the release of the $700 Priv may have been a tactical error.
"The fact that we came out with a high end phone [as our first Android device] was probably not as wise as it should have been," Chen told Abu Dhabi paper The National.
"A lot of enterprise customers have said to us, 'I want to buy your phone but $700 is a little too steep for me. I'm more interested in a $400 device'," he added.
The growing duopoly between Android and iOS has squeezed BlackBerry's own in-house operating system out of the market. BlackBerry will continue to support BlackBerry 10 — once heralded as the company's future — for an unspecified period of time, but will not release new BB10-based devices.
Still, Chen believes his firm has a chance for differentiation based on BlackBerry's long history of strong security and integration in corporate environments.
"We're the only people who really secure Android, taking the security features of BlackBerry that everyone knows us for and make it more reachable for the market," he said.
Wesley Hilliard
Andrew Orr
Amber Neely
William Gallagher
31 Comments
Like that's going to work! Time to close it down and give the share holders their money back.
Death of a dinosaur, now just another android beigebox shifter :p
President Obama still has to use a BlackBerry phone on their on-site BlackBerry BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) because it's the only communications network currently approved for classified discussions (last I heard). iPhones can be managed and used by a BES but I'm not sure if they've been approved for classified use. With BlackBerry no longer making their own line of mobile devices, how long will it take for the government to validate and approve the use of other mobile devices for classified use? Android based phones are only approved when using Samsung Knox but that might not even apply to classified use. BlackBerry saying they can secure Android might be overstating their capability because I don't believe any Android-based phone can really be secured no matter what infrastructure it's added to. If BlackBerry forks Android to create their own OS for mobile devices then I don't see how this would get them into a lower costing market except for those penny-pinching budget people who don't understand what it really costs to provide secure devices to its employees.
Yeah, go after the high end and hope to take on Apple, he thought a keyboard would solve the problem Samsung was having in the high end. He knew who could not win in the race to the bottom and trying to jump in the mid was instant death, so why not go after the high end. Time to close the doors and sell what they have to another company so they can maintain their contractual obligation with the various government agency who require BB for the security aspects. I feel bad for anyone who keep buying into BB stock, they are through good money after bad on this.
BB10 was dead before it even launched. How can these companies be so blind?