BlackBerry building BlackBerry Enterprise Service into Boeing Black device, an Android phone which will self-destruct when tampered with
BlackBerry works with Boeing on phone that self-destructs — (Reuters) - BlackBerry Ltd is working with Boeing Co on Boeing's high-security Android-based smartphone …
Context & Ripple Effects
In late 2014 BlackBerry's handset business was under pressure, but its security stack still commanded a premium: the Reuters report has it embedding BlackBerry Enterprise Service into Boeing's 'Black' Android phone, a device designed to wipe itself if tampered with. Rather than selling its own secure hardware, BlackBerry is licensing the management layer onto someone else's.
That template repeated quickly — a Samsung Galaxy Tab S reborn as the Secusmart-encrypted SecuTablet, then encrypted messaging extended to iOS and Android — and by mid-2015 BlackBerry was reported weighing Android for its own upcoming phone as it shifted focus to software and device management.
First-order effects
- Boeing gains a hardened enterprise-management layer from BlackBerry for the Black phone, letting it sell a self-destructing Android device to government and defense buyers without building mobile-device security from scratch.
Second-order effects
- Other handset makers become distribution channels rather than competitors: as with the Samsung-based SecuTablet and cross-platform BBM Protected, any vendor can carry BlackBerry's security software instead of being displaced by it.
Third-order effects
- If the partner-hardware model keeps working while owned hardware loses money, the endpoint is what happened by late 2016: BlackBerry ending in-house phone development entirely after a $372M quarterly loss, outsourcing design, manufacturing, and sales to partners while keeping the software and security business.
The trend: Secure-phone economics are pushing BlackBerry from owning the device to renting out the trust layer that runs on other companies' Android hardware.