BlackBerry Launches Android Smartphone

wiredmikey writes: In an attempt to come back from the dead, BlackBerry announced plans to sell an Android-powered smartphone. The struggling Canadian smartphone maker said it would begin selling "Priv," described as "a flagship handheld device that will run on the Android operating system with BlackBerry security," expected to be available later this year. The company isn't giving up on its own operating system, and will continue to develop and enhance its BlackBerry 10 platform, which currently represents less than one percent of smartphone users.

Comments

Re:6 years

[narcc]

It was a stupid idea then, and it's a stupid idea now. "Hey, let's toss out every advantage we have and become another me-too player in a crowded market!"

Android hasn't exactly been a path to success for anyone but Samsung. Their own OS, QNX, is superior in just about every way imaginable, including development tools.

The board should have fired Chen just for suggesting they do something this foolish.

Re:What Happened?

[Notorious G]

It basically boils down to arrogance. I was a IT consultant and went on site to Blackberry offices in the 2008-ish time frame. They were building new office space like a dot-com era venture funded business on crack and insisted it was all going up from there.The iPhone had come out and was eating the market alive and BB execs I talked to considered it little more than a fad device for consumers that would never penetrate the business market. R&D pretty much stagnated as they decided the BB was so damn good it pretty much could not be improved. But what really did them in was apps. Ever try to write a BB app? It was frigging impossible to get it done. The API was poorly documented and often just flat out wrong. There was the public API and a API the internal BB developers used that legend has was much better. I don't know how much I really believe that but I can tell you for sure BB development sucked. Apple had it right, make app development easy and well documented. As far as I know, BB still has not learned this lesson.

Re:6 years

[acoustix]

If they can take Android, which is open source, and create their own fork of it which is proven to be much more secure yet can still use the Android app eco-system, it could very well be a big hit when combined with good QWERTY phones.

Here's the problem: Android isn't 100% open source (at least the way I understand it). The first part is obvious: Google Play Services. This is not open source, but it is needed to run many of the apps. (this is also why I can't run some of the Android apps on my BB Z10) There are also many binaries included in the Android OS where there is no code available. Because of that BlackBerry (or any other company) cannot guarantee the security of the device running Android. So they cannot have a secure device like a BB10 device.

BlackBerry is doing what some of their supporters want: Great hardware (which is what BB is known for) running an OS with tons of apps.

BlackBerry will continue to develop the BB10 OS because they have many customers that demand it.

My disclaimer: I've had my Z10 since launch and I still love it. The BB10 OS is very well designed, fast and secure. I love it.