Dubai: Blackberry said that it will continue to be on the software side of the smartphone business after announcing that it would end its in-house development of devices.
Alex Thurber, Senior Vice-President for Global Device Sales at BlackBerry, said in a telephone interview from Canada that other smartphone manufacturers will make, design and distribute the phones through licensing agreements where BlackBerry only provides the IP and the software.
The Waterloo, Ontario company has already signed an agreement with a telecom joint venture in Indonesia, and Thurber said the next will be in China and India. “I believe that the new licensing model will allow us to focus more on the software side and allow hardware manufacturers to develop the hardware that is necessary for their particular market. In that way, in each country, we can ensure that a right combination of hardware and software for that market,” he said.
“The smartphone market is different from each country and we want to have the best solution for each market. Our corporate strategy is ‘secure mobility communications’ and hand-held is a key component of that,” he said.
The Canadian firm has gradually shifted to software from smartphones under John Chen’s leadership due to weakening hardware sales.
“I am excited about the opportunities we are working right now. We’re not getting out of the smartphone business. We’re focusing on what we do best and what really matters when it comes to devices is the key — software,” he said.
Bigger screen
Blackberry has launched its third Android-powered device that runs on BlackBerry-developed Android software and its second smartphone designed and built externally — DTEK60 — in the UAE for Dh1,999.
The DTEK60 is manufactured by Chinese manufacturer — TCL, maker of Alcatel devices — and boasts a bigger screen with higher resolution, longer battery life, quick charge technology, better camera specs and a fingerprint sensor. It has no physical keyboard like the DTEK50.
With the DTEK60 BlackBerry is trying to differentiate itself from the crowd by cramming in a lot of security.
“We are continuing our focus to put ‘smart’ on the smartphones and focusing more and more on the software, from a security perspective as well as from a productivity perspective. With the DTEK60, same as its predecessor DTEK50, we started from the very beginning with a security focus. We have embedded crypto keys into the phone itself to ensure that the hardware you think you have is the right hardware.
“We have made many changes to the Linux and Android operating systems to end up with the world’s most secure Android smartphone,” he said.
He said that there will be a lot of BlackBerry-branded devices in the market next year. DTEK60 is part of BlackBerry’s transition towards a device software licensing strategy.
He said that along with Google, BlackBerry is the only company that releases the Android security patches on the phones on the day when released by Google.
Thurber also confirmed that a new handset featuring a physical keyboard would be released within the next six months. There is demand for such a device still in the market.
