- BlackBerrry (BBRY) is thinking of launching its first phone to run on Google's version of Android, 4 sources tell Reuters. The decision is reportedly tied to BlackBerry's efforts to "pivot to focus on software and device management."
- BlackBerry is coming off an FQ4 in which end-user phone sales fell to 1.6M from 1.9M in FQ3 and 3.4M a year earlier; IDC estimates the company's smartphone OS share was down to 0.3% in calendar Q1. Meanwhile, BlackBerry has estimated it needs to sell 10M phones/year to break even on its hardware ops.
- As it is, BlackBerry has partnered with Samsung to provide security software/services for Samsung's Android hardware, and has launched plenty of cross-platform security and MDM solutions. BB10 phones support Android apps via Amazon's Appstore for Android, but don't have access to Google apps/services that are baked into Google's version of Android or distributed via the Play Store.