RIM Again Floats Idea of Licensing BlackBerry OS - pressleybrover

After Research in Motion launches BlackBerry 10 in earlyish 2022, your next "BlackBerry" device could total from HTC, LG, Samsung or Sony. Lip is formerly again talking astir licensing its touch-centric BlackBerry OS boot to other manufacturers. The theme of BlackBerry software licensing has been bandied about ever since RIM CEO Thorsten Heins took control of the company in January. Merely in recent weeks, Brim has sounded closer than ever to partnering with former competitors to expand BlackBerry's hand out beyond its stagnant U.S. drug user base.

"QNX [the computer software company RIM acquired in 2010] is already licensed across the automotive sector –we could exercise that with BB10 if we chose to," Heins told Bloomberg. "The platform can constitute licensed." Early in August, Heins told The Telegraph in London that Brim was "investigating" a licensing model, but that it was "way likewise early to fix into any details." Soon after Heins spoke with the Telegraph, an analyst speculated that RIM power permission its software to Samsung and that the companies were negotiating so much a deal, a rumor that Samsung quickly denied.

Nevertheless, speculation that BlackBerry 10 could beryllium licensed to other manufacturers continues to surface, often sparked by comments from RIM's own CEO. The company hasn't committed to licensing yet, but it's a long meter until we insure BlackBerry 10. Before so, we expect to see a new iPhone, new Android devices, and an enterprise-ready version of Windows Phone.

That's bad news for RIM, which has already slipped to 10.7 percent of all U.S. smartphone users down from 17.2 per centum in Jan, according to metrics firm comScore. To survive yet another wave of new smartphones, the caller may have no choice but to pass BlackBerry software and services on not-BlackBerry devices.

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