BlackBerry signs patent licensing deal with low-end Android handset maker BLU and ends its litigation against the company
Context & Ripple Effects
BlackBerry's move from handset maker to licensor has been building for years: the weak Q2 earnings alongside the Priv launch in 2015 showed its own hardware could not carry the company, while the $940M Qualcomm royalty refund confirmed how much money flows through mobile patent licensing. The BLU deal extends that playbook downmarket, converting an active lawsuit into a recurring royalty stream from a low-end Android vendor.
First-order effects
- BLU gets legal certainty for its budget Android handsets in exchange for per-unit royalties, while BlackBerry adds a paying licensee without manufacturing anything itself.
- BlackBerry keeps spending on patent enforcement even as it licenses — weeks after this deal it was hit with a $137M judgment to Nokia in a separate contract dispute, showing it fights on both sides of the patent table.
Second-order effects
- Other low-cost Android makers without cross-licensing portfolios become the natural next targets for BlackBerry's licensing team, since the BLU settlement establishes a template: settle or litigate.
- As BlackBerry-branded hardware winds down — TCL's manufacturing deal was later set to end in August 2020 — licensing revenue shifts from supplementing hardware sales to being the business itself.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward mid-size former OEMs persisting as pure patent-holding licensors, with handset economics decided less by who builds phones than by whose patents are inside them — a structure where litigation outcomes like the Nokia judgment directly reshape balance sheets.
The trend: Struggling smartphone makers are exiting hardware and reconstituting themselves as patent-licensing businesses, with each settled lawsuit converting enforcement risk into annuity revenue.