Blackberry Is Fully Adopting Android OS For Future Devices

Earlier this month, we reported that Blackberry might release two new Android phones this year. Blackberry Priv has been doing great in the market and the company is now even more confident in the decision it took to go with Android OS. It’s quite possible we’ve seen the last of Blackberry 10 phones as the company is now planning to go Android all the way this year.

John Chen, CEO BlackBerry Ltd., holding the BlackBerry Priv smartphone. Image credit: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images

This was confirmed by one of the company’s executives earlier this month when he mentioned that as time goes on, the company may have to let go of it’s native OS and fully focus on releasing devices running Android OS. For a company that was steadily recording losses, the Priv came as a major breakthrough.

This is why the company is now restrategizing and focusing on Android. Damian Tay, Blackberry senior director of APAC product management 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…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

Blackberry Priv has helped the company’s stocks and things are starting to look very good. Of course, it is a high end device but with the look of things, Blackberry may release cheaper devices this year. The next device may be the Blackberry Vienna we spotted last year and rumor has it that the device may be released in the second half of the year.