Speaking with The Economic Times of India, Damian Tay (Senior Director for Product Management, BlackBerry Asia Pacific) described the new Priv as “essentially our transition to [the] Android ecosystem. 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]. But for now, we have BB10 and Android platforms for our smartphones.”
If those comments somehow left you in any doubts about the company’s intentions, Tay continued: “The future is really Android. We went for Android essentially for its app ecosystem. In addition, all the enterprise solutions that we have been doing have been cross-platform for a long time now. So it’s a natural progression towards Android.”
Just in case you thought BB10 had a future.
They should have done it years ago really. I said Nokia should have jumped years ago, but we all know what happened to them.
If they can come up with solid hardware and they don’t progressively screw up the software with crap like Samsung have done, and get out sensible updates, they could end up being the reference Android implementation. Android might be hugely popular but it still has its problems waiting for someone to sensibly solve them.
My biggest problem with Android is Android Java fork providing a similar developer experience to Symbian C++ vs the official languages.
With its quirks, continuous cruft between releases, not able to release bug free support library releases, outdated documentation, tips scattered around G+ posts from developer team, dropping IDEs versions, still not able to provide a proper build system compared with the previous Ant one.
And a 3rd class treatment to any developer that dares to make use of the NDK.
Definitely a case study of “Worse is Better” in action.
Edited 2016-02-02 08:57 UTC
Well, Google seems to be importing large chunks of OpenJDK into android at the moment. Hopefully that’ll bring them up to a reasonably complete and modern version of Java eventually. Of course, you’ll still have to deal with android studio and with older devices, but it’s a step in the right direction.
(ref http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/29/google-confirms-next-android-vers… )
Edited 2016-02-02 09:55 UTC
What those articles always forget to refer, but anyone that looked at it like Jake Wharton did, is that it is just OpenJDK 7.
Still no official plans to move beyond that.
so they can become just another OEM or ODM like every other android handset player.
Only Canonical/Ubuntu and Jolla/Sailfish offer any kind of alternative.
You can’t seriously say Jolla. They are doing exactly what BlackBerry is doing only infinitely worse and on a scale so tiny that it is a wonder you and I have both heard of them
https://blog.jolla.com/taalojarvi_early_access/
I saw a headline from 19 hours ago “Jolla Confirms The Sailfish Tablet Is Dead” so there goes that.
I specifically linked to the “we are updating the software” blogpost but as you can see from the comments there that community is basically falling apart and was tiny to begin with.
Jolla really overplayed their hand with the tablet. Horrible communication and a complete abuse of the money they received for tablets. They are now in the process of trying to make that right “during the upcoming year” but they are basically a pyramid scheme where they already spend the money that they now will/might return on their current “software only” strategy. They also lied about that by saying these funds were separated and…I could go on and on but that wouldn’t fit this topic here.
I think it is extremely unlikely that Jolla will survive unless they get several more money injections. Expecting that Jolla/Sailfish every becomes a real alternative…they are basically an Android Runtime allready
I like alternatives, it really sucks there are hardly any and from the looks of it they won’t last long.
Long live BBOS10!
Sailfish might as well be dead, and Ubuntu Touch… well, if MS was too late than Canonical’s offering is DOA.
Blackberry says “dang it… iOS is the future… err… I think, drat, just use something other than anything we’ve purchased… ok?”
I still can’t install a custom Android rom on my Playbook…
Why I never got rid of that thing, I’ll never know. It’s been boxed up for several years now waiting for something magical to happen.
I doubt very much something magical will happen within Playbook ecosystem. Maybe one obsessed developer creating that killer app for the Playbook might change this.
On the other hand, a Playbook still does pretty much what’s needed for most uses of a tablet. Those in my household will continue to serve – as long as the micro-USB port does not fail!
Had BlackBerry taken all of the money they sunk into being just another Android vendor among many, they could have poured it all into app development and significantly closed the gap between Blackberry and Android/iOS. Just by making all apps free, and paying developers what their apps cost on other platforms, would have been enough to spur things like jet fuel on a fire. Free would have made apps highly attractive to install, compensating on par with the other platforms would have made developers jump at the chance for almost risk-free revenue.
Edit: by “Compensating on par with the other platformsâ€, I mean a developer needs to already have an app on either Android or iOS. If they deliver a feature-comparable app for the BlackBerry platform, they would be compensated at a per-install rate equivalent to the average of whatever other platforms they are already selling that app on.
Edited 2016-02-02 04:48 UTC
Just hope this does not distract them from continued support of the excellent embedded OS that is QNX. Oh, and welcome to another ‘droid cloner/maker too. Now, dear seasoned BB users, you can wave goodbye to that old stability feeling you’ve been accustomed to…
QNX will likely continue to live although discreetly as it is hidden away into so many car on-board systems and a number of mission-critical systems.
If BlackBerry follows through with the considered shift to become another droid maker, they will loose what has been their distinguishing value proposition. After all, the smart phones currently on the market pretty much look the same.
Android + Blackberry messenger + BES would have been a very good proposition.
In any case, even if they were betting on BB10, they should have had a Skunkworks Android project ready to be greenlit at a moment’s notice as soon as it became clear BB10 was floundering. Heck, even Nokia had one, and could have jumped on to that had Microsoft not taken them over.
This was a major strategic fail.
uhm, isn’t that exactly what happened? They tried with BB10, had Android as a fallback, tried Android on released hardware and decided to go that way.
Well, this is 3 years (almost to the day) since any BB10 device became available. 3 years!
If they had a skunkworks project 3 years ago and didn’t greenlight it 2.5 years ago, then the management of Blackberry were really inept.
Yes.
Edited 2016-02-02 18:01 UTC
Oh, you meant that while BlackBerry was struggling and trying to finally get their own OS out of the door…they should have spread their focus to have a backupplan to their latest and greatest? That would have seriously delayed BB10 and demotivated everyone working overtime to get BB10 out of the door.
Of course they had this backupplan in the back of their minds, but actually executing it in any meaningful way…nope
This has ruined my day…
I have 2 Blackberries currently, a Z30 and a Passport SE and to me they are awesome.
I like BB10 as it is stable and the hub is just awesome, furthermore, no nasty skins over the top of it when you turn on a new phone.. I don’t care about apps much, just that it works and I can get stuff done with the minimal of tapping the screen.
It’s sad, Blackberry will no longer be an alternative but just another Android clone..
There is no longer any choice in the phone market…
Marvelous!
Edited 2016-02-02 09:56 UTC
I love my Classic too and I’ve wanted the Passport SE for a while but I wasn’t sure if I was buying a dead platform. Now I know, thanks Blackberry!
BB10 is the closest thing to a desktop OS there is on mobile without the nagging and hoping that the next update will fix your battery drain and sd-card support.
Maybe HTC can make another m7 happen… I love that thing too.
If you want a Passport, I would go for it, it’s a cool phone, I for one would recommend it, not only because of the awesome BBOS10, but because it is different, it definatly gets some looks and it’s cool to not be a sheep.
The SE’s build quality is really nice aswel.
Reading the blog post in some details reveals that BB10 will remain in service as long as it takes to render Android as secure as BB10.
Governments and organizations with strong requirements for secure communications appear to still purchase BB10 devices over Android one.
The big question is – what if Android cannot be secured to the same level as BB10? Will this means the continuation of this platform?
So with Windows and Blackberry now “dead OS” in the market, looks like us consumers have a choice of 2.
The mobile phone market will soon revert back to altering Android to create differentiation (this is what blackberry have done). Lawyers will soon follow to enforce them. What always happens when a market stagnates.
BB is future marketing as a hardened Android-oid?
Yes. Which indirectly means that they are now saying “we switched to Android for our most recent phone, but you cannot use that one if you want to be secure just yet, that is going to take an undefined amount of time (a year?)”
Furthermore it indirectly means “If you want to be secure your only option is somewhat older hardware with an OS that we consider end-of-the-line and have no upgrade-to-Android plan for”
When you combine that we the “If we don’t sell 5 million phones this year we are going to step out of the hardware business” that basically all translates to:
1) Last year we were selling secure phones.
2) This year we are selling phones that are uhm… less secure.
3) Next year…we will probably not be selling phones anymore, but YEAH software
Thanks for the clear, direct English, Avgalen
I write it like I say it…which is often not very clear and full of ( and ” and sometimes even an autocorrect error…but I try
Traitors! How long will we have to live with the stupid Java heritage? 🙂
As long as coders favors these kind of languages and/or are unable to learn another one. A platform without applications is a dead platform.