BlackBerry has launched the PRIV smartphone in India, which is essentially BlackBerry’s attempt to transition to the Android platform, reports ET. Speaking to ET, Damian Tay, APAC product manager at BlackBerry said that “As we secure Android, over a period of time, we would not have two platforms, and may have only Android as a platform (for smartphones).” Tay further mentioned that BlackBerry would launch two more Android devices devices in India priced below the PRIV, which currently costs Rs 62,990. Note that at CES this year, BlackBerry said it would continue to invest in BlackBerry 10, but did not commit to launching new BB10 devices. On the other hand, the company specified that it would develop another Android-based smartphone. Long time coming: It makes sense for BlackBerry to move away from its own proprietary OS to Android. The company has been failing for a while, with its devices hardly finding any users outside of the hardcore BlackBerry fans. BlackBerry did a pretty decent job with BB10 as an OS, however, its major failing was the lack of an app ecosystem. The platform essentially faced a Catch-22 situation - it didn’t have enough users for developers to want to develop apps, while there weren't enough apps for users to want to adopt the platform. Other developments: In May last year, BlackBerry said it was in discussions with the regulatory authorities and telecom operators in India to launch a virtual SIM solution by the end of 2015. The solution would let…
Please subscribe to MediaNama. Don't share prints and PDFs.
You May Also Like
News
Google has released a Google Travel Trends Report which states that branded budget hotel search queries grew 179% year over year (YOY) in India, in...
Advert
135 job openings in over 60 companies are listed at our free Digital and Mobile Job Board: If you’re looking for a job, or...
News
By Aroon Deep and Aditya Chunduru You’re reading it here first: Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised...
News
Rajesh Kumar* doesn’t have many enemies in life. But, Uber, for which he drives a cab everyday, is starting to look like one, he...