With Blackberry seemingly com in apart at the seams, many wonder just how the former smartphone juggernaut would plan to move on. More to the point, with Android and iOS soaking up the market share sunlight, how would Blackberry remain relevant? After previously swearing off Android, their CEO now says he’s like to give both Android and iOS a go — for security and productivity.
When prompted about the possibility of taking Balckberry’s security efforts elsewhere, CEO John Chen said “We’d love to do it… I would love to find a way to make our BlackBerry experience [available] on Android and iOS. It’s not without difficulties, as you all know, but it’s something that we are very interested in trying.” He went on to tout Blackberry’s efforts in both security and productivity.
With a skeleton crew of upper-management left, and a staff that’s routinely being laid off, Blackberry simply has to do something. The real question is, can they make it work at this point? Do they have enough on offer to make other platforms interested? Recent offerings suggest that the customer still has hope for the Waterloo, Canada based tech company.
Blackberry Messenger, even with it’s day-one hitches, later had a massive amount of downloads. The maker of the former handset-of-choice is also often looked upon with fondness in regard to security. The question now is whether or not they can make it work, and more importantly, will they? If you’re wondering how they’ll get Apple or Google to buy in, they probably wont. “It will be a service that we offer with our BES strategy and the model will come from a per user, per month model,” Chen said. “I will not rule out the monetization from advertising model, but at the moment we are very far away from doing it. That doesn’t mean we can’t do it with a partner, but it’s not in my math.”
A long way off, and monetized for the individual. This might be the new-look Blackberry. If their new business model is some sort of paid-to-play offering for the individual, it better be really good — and here really quickly.
