I bet you did not see this coming from BlackBerry

by Volker Weber

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Since John Chen took over the helm at BlackBerry, they have made some good moves. Not only have they been teasing new devices to be coming to market soon. The Passport for instance promises to be way cool.

But BlackBerry has also swallowed its pride and made a deal with Amazon. With BlackBerry 10.3 they will have access to the Amazon Appstore, and they have upped their Android play to the point where you get two smartphones in one, courtesy of BlackBerry Balance:

  1. A potentially highly secure BlackBerry, if it need be with the latest acquisition, SecuSuite from german security company Secusmart.
  2. An Android phone that lets you install all those cool apps you need. Sonos never wanted to make a BlackBerry controller. But now they have. It was already in the Amazon Appstore.


This is a big deal.

Comments

Indeed, that is a big one. I can only hope that corporate IT understands that and takes advantage of BlackBerry Balance. Too many of them are still in "lock down" mode :(

Abdelkader Boui, 2014-09-14

Cloud is peeing on Corporate IT.

Bodo Menke, 2014-09-14

There are good legal reasons for "lock down". Where they don't exist, IT managers are heading for replacement.

Volker Weber, 2014-09-14

Thanks for clarifying. :) I was indeed writing about instances where "lock down" is not legally required.

Abdelkader Boui, 2014-09-14

I really hope this step will help Blackberry to get a bigger user base - not only in the corporate environment, also for the private users.

Ralph Hammann, 2014-09-15

Funnily enough, I did see this one coming - But then I have the inside edge here. There are also a few other things in the works which should be making an appearance over the next couple of months.

There is still the issue of not allowing Android apps inside the Work perimeter at present. For one thing, due to the nature of the way the Android apps work, we cannot trust them. But we are attempting to "containerise" them. For example TeamStudio's Unplugged is a damn fine app ideal for use in the Work environment.

Dragon Cotterill, 2014-09-15

So can now somebody please tell IBM to publish their apps at Amazon and support this?
And I don't mean this one: www.amazon.de/dp/B004X29DWW/ ;-)

Oliver Regelmann, 2014-09-15

And now every Blackberry-Developer stopps programming for BBOS.

Karl Heindel, 2014-09-15

Oliver, Android apps don't run in the business perimeter, as Dragon already said.

Karl, the fact that you mention BBOS shows that you are not the resident expert in this space. ;-)

Volker Weber, 2014-09-15

I thought that Amazon appstore was accessible already before on BB. What's the big deal now? is it coming directly with the OS update onto every device?

Stephan Bohr, 2014-09-18

Two things:

A) now supported and preinstalled
B) updated Android player to support this

Volker Weber, 2014-09-18

Ich habe das OS 10.3 heute auf allen meinen Blackberrys installiert und bin schwer begeistert! Vor allem die automatischen App-Updates aus dem Androidstore sind eine tolle Bereicherung. Das hat bis jetzt noch gefehlt... ;-)

Hoffentlich gibt es bald auch noch irgendwo eine funktionsfähige Version von Blend zum Download, bin sehr gespannt darauf es auszuprobieren...

Ralph Hammann, 2014-09-19

Hm, interesting move.

Kind of reminds me of the WINOS2 Strategy that IBM used on OS/2 to get access to the Windows 3.1 Applications which were prevalent at that time.
The embrace and extend strategy did not work out then, WINOS2 was forever lagging behind Microsofts releases and users needed to work out issues introduced by the platform that the programs did not expect.

Looks like we are back to the platform wars again.

This time mingling mobile devices, app and entertainment stores and cloud based computing.

Also an interesting Partnership since Amazon is trying to adress the consumer market with its fire phone (and kindle).

Martin Forisch, 2014-09-20

A big deal, in a small pond.
I don't think there's anyone left on the shores watching splashes.

Craig Wiseman, 2014-09-23

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