Technology
BlackBerry’s announcement that it acquired U.K.-based cyber security consultancy company Encription is a heartening development for the once-top-dog smartphone company. The world has watched BlackBerry — once Research in Motion — slide steadily from leading the smartphone market to falling by the wayside as Apple and Samsung glide past. But the Encription purchase is a deliberate reshuffling of the remaining cards in BlackBerry’s deck.
To anyone who has followed BlackBerry’s painful downward spiral within the smartphone scene — a market in which it once was king — this move into consultancy services looks smart. BlackBerry is capitalizing on one of its biggest strengths: secure communication technology.
After all, there is a reason why the U.S. government preferred BlackBerrys for so long (the same reason Pakistan’s government blocked the company’s services in a privacy crackdown last summer). BlackBerry made a global name for itself thanks to its software’s encrypted features, so much so that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority was worried that terrorists were using BlackBerrys to communicate out of sight of surveillance technology. Now, the company is building on that reputation with its latest acquisition, in the hopes of gaining ground in software, versus its failing hardware business.
So, concentrating on services, particularly cyber security, could be the way BlackBerry stays afloat. Reports over the last five or so years have foretold the company’s death knell -- without hardware, it was difficult to imagine the company surviving on much else. But a move to services, and in a market as charged as cyber crime, could be its saving grace.
Just as analysts predicted BlackBerry’s death a few years ago, they have been eager to point out that 2016 could mark the end of BlackBerry’s smartphone business. It is clear that the company is not going down without an exit strategy plan. Hence, the move to consultancy services. And after releasing an Android-based phone last November dubbed the “Priv” — named for its emphasis on privacy, and which was able to bypass one of BlackBerry’s biggest problems with its phones, the lack of apps — some see BlackBerry banking on new iterations of hardware to carry it through its transition to software services.
Even if BlackBerry never gives up the hardware business, a focus on security and privacy services — one of its most highly-prized deliverables — should keep its head above water, for now.
