Blackberry 10 mobile platform might be licensed, to help invigorate RIM's sagging fortunes, said Thorsten Heins, ceo, RIM.
"We don't have the economy of scale to compete against the guys who crank out 60 handsets a year. We have to differentiate and have a focused platform," said Heins in an interview to The Daily Telegraph. "To deliver BB10 we may need to look at licensing it to someone who can do this at a way better cost proposition than I can do it. There [are] different options we could do that we're currently investigating.
"You could think about us building a reference system, and then basically licensing that reference design, have others build the hardware around it--either it's a BlackBerry or it's something else being built on the BlackBerry platform. We're investigating this, and it's way too early to get into any details. We have to also model this from a finance perspective--that's why we're working with the financial advisers to see, if we do this, where it would take the company. Either we do it ourselves or we do it with a partner. But we will not abandon the subscriber base."
According to Heins, RIM might allow other hardware manufacturers to make their own hardware with BB10 on board, just like Microsoft does with its Windows phones "our platform isn't burning," and BlackBerry is "a very secure, entrenched stable business," Heins said.
Heins said the media has been highly critical of RIM and his company is not be written-off yet, "Most of the media is very black and white - they look at every little thing that could be bad and put it on to our shoulders. Let's be honest - we don't like it. This is something we have to get through and convince the critics and the market that BB10 is going to cut it. BB7 is still a competitive product; we are not in a trough."
Blackberry's USP was its keyboard, but now Apple and Samsung have outpaced Blackberry's with their touchscreens. Heins admits give-in that RIM's sales in developed countries were lost due to Blackberry missed the 4G connections and users bringing in their own handhelds and using it for work. The company still has 80 million subscribers.
RIM is trimming its workforce from 20,000 to 11,000, with sales which used to be traded from $140 to $ 7.25.
In other news, RIM has unveiled PlayBook OS 2.0.1 update for PlayBook Wi-Fi tablets worldwide. This was announced alongside rolling out of new BlackBerry PlayBook 4G/LTE tablet.
This update will be followed by the upgrade of the much awaited PlayBook OS 2.1 update which will include improvements to Android Player and Android apps need not have to be converted.