BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) is turning to one of the tech giants of the industry, Google, for powering its smartphones. Reuters sources told that Blackberry is thinking to come up with Android operated smartphone as the firm failed to grabbed the attention of users through its BlackBerry 10 line series. Up till now BlackBerry uses its own operating system for its devices but its apps store is considerably below par both quantitatively and qualitatively.
Blackberry introduced its Blackberry 10 lineup of handsets, instead of making Android as its home of devices the smartphone maker betted on its own operating system in an attempt to dominate the dominators but that experiment proved worst for the firm. BlackBerry once pioneered the business world with its business supported smartphones but loses its fame to smartphone makers such as Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Samsung. Currently BlackBerry has less than 1 percent share in smartphone market.
The BlackBerry 10 line of devices launched in the early 2013, getting positive early reviews but failed to compete with Apple or Android devices, in particular due to lack of big name apps.
“We don’t comment on rumors and speculation, but we remain committed to the BlackBerry 10 operating system, which provides security and productivity benefits that are unmatched,” said the company in an email.
BlackBerry Chief Executive John Chen is focusing on new device management system, BES12, which enables business and government clients to run the software not only through the platform BlackBerry devices but also the software run across Android, Apple’s iOS and Windows operating system.
People familiar with the matter told Reuters that by introducing a new smartphone running Android OS BlackBerry is signaling to shut the mouth of disbelievers. BlackBerry is also confident that the new business supporting BES12 management software would not only help in processing business operations but also provides security to smartphones and tablets using other operating systems.
BlackBerry announced in March at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that it will launch a slider device in the 2nd half of 2015, which will come with a touch screen and with a physical keyboard. The device is said to be powered by Android operating system.
