BlackBerry might drop its own platform in favor of Android

As it turns out, BlackBerry is mulling the idea of ditching the once-famous BlackBerry 10 (BB10) operating system. In order to bring the glory back to the company and its brand, BlackBerry might abandon BB10 for Google’s Android for its future smartphones. It is worth mentioning that most of the company’s revenue comes from the hardware business unit and not from services. The Canadian tech giant released the slider phone BlackBerry Priv towards the end of last week in India for a whopping Rs 62,900 (about $929), while this device retails at $699 in the U.S. This is reportedly where Damian Tay, senior director, APAC product management at BlackBerry, spilled the beans about the company’s future direction to the Economic Times. Tay apparently said, “The Priv device is essentially our transition to 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,” Tay added. The senior director thinks Android is the future. BlackBerry experimented with Android for the Priv precisely because of the app ecosystem. He also indicated that the enterprise solutions that BlackBerry produces have all been cross-platform. Therefore, it is a “natural progression towards Android.”