Report: BlackBerry 'Considering’ Making an Android Phone
You know the old saying: If you can’t beat them, you (allegedly) join them.
According to a new report from Reuters, former market-leading mobile device maker BlackBerry is considering equipping an upcoming smartphone with Google’s Android, the dynamic OS that powers phones and tablets made by Samsung, Sony, LG, and others.
There are few specifics in the report –– most notably, whether the rumored BlackBerry Android phone would carry Google branding and offer access to its mobile app Play store. Amazon’s Fire tablets and phones, for instance, are built on versions of the open-sourced Android operating system that are not licensed by Google, and thus offer only apps from its Amazon Appstore.
As typical of most rumors, the companies involved have declined to comment.
The move to make an Android BlackBerry would be yet another step toward industry assimilation, one of its largest yet.
The Storm smartphone in 2008, seen as a response to the popularity of the touchscreen-based Apple iPhone, was BlackBerry’s first handset to be built without a physical keyboard. And in 2013′s BlackBerry 10 release, the company reinvented itself as an app-first operating system, even introducing compatibility with apps built for Android phones.
BlackBerry’s last stab at standing out came in the form of the Passport, a sharp, rectangular productivity-based phone that garnered shrugging reviews.
The struggling mobile handset-maker dropped to fourth place in the market when Microsoft’s Windows Phone jumped it in 2013. Android, the type of phone BlackBerry may soon start making, currently tops the charts in number of smartphones sold globally.
Of course, the real question that these rumors bring: Does this mean there’s a chance we’d eventually (finally) get a Google Play version of the BlackBerry Playbook?
Email me at danbean@yahoo-inc.com. Follow me on Twitter at danielwbean.
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