Looks like Blackberry, formerly RIM, isn’t out of tricks just yet. BlackBerry has been struggling for years to keep up with the competition – that being Android and iOS – and they’ve continued to lose market share. In fact, they are now down to the last 2-3% of their market share. Hard to imagine BlackBerry once ruled the mobile space.
A new report out today from Reuters is stating that BlackBerry is looking to make their next smartphone run on Android’s OS. This shouldn’t be too surprising, considering they were already running Android apps on BlackBerry’s OS – Microsoft is actually doing the same thing in Windows 10 smartphones. According to Reuters, this is part of BlackBerry’s plans to move away from being a complete mobile OS and hardware, to just offering their secure business services. Which are actually, still quite popular. BlackBerry still has some of the best enterprise services. While Apple and Google have tried to create their own and win over enterprise users, there are still some stubborn ones that are sticking with their trusty BlackBerry.
On the other hand, this is a bit surprising. Considering the Waterloo company was certain that their BlackBerry 10 line of smartphones would be good enough to win users back from Apple’s iPhone and a variety of Android-powered smartphones. Obviously, it wasn’t enough. Anywhere’s near enough.
Reuters did ask BlackBerry for comment, and were told by the company that they are still committed to BlackBerry 10’s platform. So we’d urge everyone to take this information with a bit of salt. As it could be true, but it could also be false. Considering it’s coming from Reuters, we’d say it’s more likely to be true than false though. Of course, BlackBerry isn’t going to come right out and say that they are working on an Android running BlackBerry. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it running a forked version of Android, however if BlackBerry is reading this. I strongly urge you to include Google services, or else the device likely won’t sell well at all. Just ask the Amazon Fire Phone.