Canadian tech giant BlackBerry (BBRY, Financial) is planning its come back in the tablet market, but not how several tech addicts and analysts had predicted. Instead of coming out with the next generation Playbook version, BlackBerry decided to team up with the biggies of the space and make its presence felt in the software side of the gadget. This is in line with CEO John Chen’s vision of turning BlackBerry into a security software focused company and away from hardware, though not quit the game totally. Let’s take a look at the recent development and what that means for others.
The new alliance
BlackBerry has teamed up with the Koran smartphone mammoth Samsung (SSNLF, Financial), tech biggie IBM (IBM, Financial) and Germany’s SecuSmart to develop a device being referred to as a SecuTablet. In fact, SecuSmart is a company specializing in encryption that BlackBerry acquired last year. The SecuTablet is a Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 LTE 16GB device that comes bundled with software from IBM and SecuSmart that, according to PC World, “combines a number of cryptographic chips to protect data in motion and at rest.”
This moves comes as a part of BlackBerry’s continuous efforts to expand the base of its enterprise and government customers. The SecuTablet won’t be available to the regular customers and is being developed keeping in mind the security needs of global public sector markets, providing the highest level of security to keep the critical business information safe. The device is expected to be priced around $2,380, much more than any other high spec tablet available in the market, even more than what a high configuration laptop would cost. (For better comparison, just take a look at the specs on this laptop and then compare its price to that of the SecuTablet.)
One of BlackBerry’s Senior VPs, Hans-Christoph Quelle, who migrated to the company from SecuSmart, was cited in the PC World report, saying “Naturally, this level of security doesn’t come cheap: An unmodified Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 retails for around $500, but the SecuTablet will cost around €2,250 ($2,380) including the Secusmart MicroSD encryption card, the necessary app-wrapping and management software, and a year’s maintenance contract.” The SecuTablet from Samsung will protect the data by a secure app wrapping provided by IBM. This wrapping will help protect the sensitive data even if malware is installed on the device. On top of this, Samsung’s own Knox boot technology will make sure that the operating system on the device is authentic and doesn’t violate safety standards in any way or hasn’t been tempered with.
Takeaway for Apple
Practically speaking, the device won’t be able to cause much damage to Apple’s (AAPL, Financial) business. Why? Well, first because of the target audience, and second, because of the price. The SecuTablet comes from Samsung. But this device won’t push up the demand for Samsung’s tablets massively. The target audience for the device are high profile government organizations and businesses. While BlackBerry’s enterprise customer base is huge, not every customer will be able to afford such a costly device. Nor will most of the new customers spend so much of tablets. So, since the contact point of the gadget won’t be major, its impact won’t also be that severe.
However it might become a bit of a problem if BlackBerry’s arrangements with IBM comes in the way of the arrangement that Apple has with IBM regarding delivering enterprise apps for the iPad. After its partnership with IBM, Apple launched the first wave of enterprise apps targeted primarily at BlackBerry’s enterprise customers. The iPhone maker is working its way up in the enterprise market. So if the companies can hold up their respective sides of the arrangement, there won’t be any issue.
