RIM mulls pimping BlackBerry OS to Samsung – report RIM is seeking a financial consultant to help it with its recent money woes and is considering licensing out its mobile operating system, according to a report in Bloomberg. The Canadian company is still dealing with the consequences of last quarter's $125m loss and the exodus of the BlackBerry old guard, and is turning to the …
RIM has a strong presence because of BBM only. It is their last ace to play.
They should be looking at adopting Android and letting their user base access the Android App Store in addition to secure business communications via BES. With Boeing getting into the secure Android smartphone space this is RIM's last chance.
Seems to be the default suggestion from "analysts" when it comes to ITLNH (interesting technology looking for a new home). It was the same with WebOS. Samsung has at least two OS of its own (Bada for smartphones and whatever runs on feature phones) plus Android and Windows and Tizen. You can see how they're desperate for more OS... Google or Microsoft as almost pure software vendors would make more sense.
Rims +
BBM
Secure Push EMAIL that works
Robust Handsets (excluding touch versions)
Rims -
OS 6+ (too flakey and too slow)
No support, No technical information for building apps.
Shitty touch screen phones
Conclusions
Dump the custom OS, write the Email applications for android and add BBM.
Result
Beer.
That simple eh? How about the millions of customers which are still abusing their BBM/BES networks? Just drop support for them? You'd just give them a reason to move quicker to Android and then loss a wedge of cash on each phone not renewed using their current handset line.
Business is where there roots go. I agree with moving RIM/BES over to other OSes to exploit new revenue streams in licensing their tech, but their phones (non-touchscreen) are still popular with those who want something that communicates and don't give a damn about media-rich apps. My brother will never leave RIM phones until he loses faith in BBM and is obsessed about keeping faithful.
There's a little life in Blackberry's phone OS/Hardware market. It's just giving it one last kick up the backside to give a little more back to their consumers. Ditch OS6 and get OS7 back on form, add some trustworthy NFC, dump touchscreen phones until they have a forked OS specifically made for teens/media-savvy people.
OS6 is a negative! That'll be because OS7 and more recently OS7.1 have been available for phones that have been released in the past year. OS6 was never a complete OS, although was alot better than OS5!
It seems to me that most people's exposure to a Blackberry phone is a cheap Curve that their daughter/son own...and I'll be the first to admit that the old Curve phones that are being sold on discounts by most of the phone retailers is one of the worst phones for reliability in recent years, it is a budget phone after all!
You do realise that the latest batch of phones (since August last year) have a touchscreen AND a keyboard? The Bold 9900 is an amazing phone, and is in no way a "shitty touch screen phone".
The Blackberry OS isn't a custom OS, its their own OS...and one which is being reconfigured (again) with the release of OS10 at the end of the year.
I dont understand how RIM moving from the most secure mobile OS to using the least secure mobile OS (Android) would be seen as a suitable conclusion though. I do wonder how exposure peole posting here have of Blackberry phones and their software/hardware...
They shoudn't be in this situation because their actual hardware is generally excellent. I much prefer using my work Blackberry for e-mailing and messaging than my HTC Desire. Plus battery life is way better than my HTC, which only seems to manage a couple of days even when spending most of its time sat in my bag or jacket. My next phone purchase may well actually be a Blackberry - I'm done with the full touchscreens now. There was a screen+keyboard Android phone I saw a while ago but it got a bit panned in various reviews (incl reghard I think).
Their e-mail client software is great as well, years ahead of any IMAP clients on Android. The Android GMail program is adequate if you use GMail/GApps. But elsewhere there's nothing that touches the Blackberry one IMO.
If Blackberry went with Andriod but kept their hardware design, then I would be ok with that. Despite Android hacking me off multiple times now by munging my data (Twitter/Facebook programs deciding to merge contacts with my phone address book without asking etc). But such a move would probably save them. And bring some much-needed enterprise bits to Android. Please can someone add CardDAV / CalDAV support to a phone that's not an iPhone?
...it's time for RIM to give up the hardware biz. They've had their butts handed to them by both Android and Apple. They lost their dominance, and they don't have what it takes to pull off the miracle of getting it back.
With that said, RIM's name still commands respect when we're talking about manageability and security of mobile threat vectors. If RIM wants to continue trading, they need to shift their focus to their server/client software; write GOOD client security management software for Android, Apple and Windows phones/tablets. Tweak their management server so it's not so...touchy. And, above all else, they need to allow corporations to run their management services without filtering through RIM's servers.
The smart phone wars are done and over, as far as RIM is concerned, and they let themselves lose. Horribly. Time to salvage what they can.
Seriously, how they can pin their hopes on the input of financial types is beyond me. Those financial analysts are surely trained to assess assets and liabilities, but as RIM and Nokia just set out to prove, assets are quite worthless if they don't translate into novel products.
But I heard MS is willing to pay good $ to phone companies that commit to Winpho. Cash in while you can!
Blackberries are among the most underpowered, under-specced and expensive phones you can get (explains the battery life though).
Just being an IT administrator's wet dream ain't gonna cut it any more. Not since the "bring your own tech" trend took hold.
How many corp users actually chose BB freely and didn't have it foisted on them?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
