Sources: BlackBerry considering Android for upcoming smartphone as it moves focus to software and device management
Exclusive: BlackBerry may put Android system on new device: sources — BlackBerry (BB.TO) is considering equipping an upcoming smartphone with Google Inc.'s (GOOGL.O) …
Context & Ripple Effects
The Reuters report lands mid-arc in BlackBerry's retreat from its own operating system. Months earlier the company had signaled it would license features like its keyboard and BlackBerry Hub to other device makers, and it had already built BlackBerry Enterprise Service into the Boeing Black, a tamper-evident Android device — so Android as a base was a proven pairing before any consumer phone existed.
What changed is that the software pivot now reaches the flagship itself. The follow-through came fast: BlackBerry confirmed the Android-powered Priv would launch at end of 2015 alongside weak Q2 earnings, then CEO John Chen later conceded the device was priced too high while committing to two mid-range Android phones. The June report is the moment the strategy stopped being cross-platform services and became 'our hardware runs Google's OS.'
First-order effects
- BlackBerry's next smartphone would ship with Google's ecosystem instead of BlackBerry 10, making app availability — long the company's core buyer complaint — someone else's problem.
- Google gains an enterprise-security credibility boost at no engineering cost: BlackBerry's device-management stack running on Android validates it for regulated buyers.
Second-order effects
- Rival secure-phone makers lose their differentiation argument — if BlackBerry, the enterprise-security brand, concedes BlackBerry 10 can't sustain a handset lineup, smaller hardened-Android vendors face the same logic sooner.
- BlackBerry's licensing posture shifts from optional add-on to necessity: with its own OS sidelined, revenue from management software and licensed features like the Hub must carry the business model the handsets once did.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the endpoint is a BlackBerry with no proprietary mobile OS at all — a security-and-management vendor whose hardware exists mainly to showcase software, which is where Chen's later admission about pricing points.
- For enterprises, the consolidation onto Android narrows the market for non-Google mobile platforms, leaving regulated buyers choosing between hardened variants of one OS rather than distinct ecosystems.
The trend: Smartphone makers without app-ecosystem scale are exiting proprietary mobile OSes and repositioning around security software and device management layered on Android.