It would make more sense for RIM to go the Android route. A free, mature operating system and development platform with strong market share that runs on a huge variety of devices would give RIM the chance to go for broke on the physical device and recapture some hardware market share.

The hardware is one area where they might salvage things. An Android phone with a physical keyboard, sturdy enough to be dropped a few times? I might buy one of those.

Bundle unlimited text messaging through BBN and you would sell a whole ton of these phones.

RIM would still have to do a lot of work to harden Android to their standards: security is a large selling point for the BlackBerry wrt enterprise/gov't. Switch to bare Android, they lose their security edge and the enterprise happily continues to dump them. Harden Android, they'll be even later to market, likely break compatibility, and their customers will be gone by the time they're out.

Forgive the ignorance, but what really needs to be hardened? RIM'd be rolling their own Enterprise mail apps, etc, and Android's built on a pretty secure Linux foundation. Maybe add full disk encryption (eww w/ flash mem)? Restrict app purchases to those approved by RIM?

In what ways is BBOS more secure than Android?

The most obvious bit is RIM hasn't ever allowed self-signed code on the BlackBerry. It's not obvious from the user end (as they support sideloading just like Android), but you have to request a cert from them and dial home every time you sign (even for dev builds).

Also, when you say "secure Linux foundation", realize that the vast majority of Android phones get rooted[0], which would allow for circumventing their security and enterprise controls (ex: disabling the camera, kill switches, restricting apps, monitoring usage, etc.). Part of RIM's appeal has been their relative immunity to rooting; they'd have to be able to prove their variant of Android is notably more secure than AOSP (else there's no advantage)

[0] by which I mean models that can be rooted, not individual phones that have been rooted

I'm not sure against what kind of problems are you looking for security against? If it's just to make sure employees phones are safe against external attacks, why not simply tell your employees to not root their phones and use Android's full-disk encryption? If it's defense from malicious employees from accessing your VPN, then the solution seems out of the scope of your phone software - and banning non-blackberries (as many companies do) wouldn't solve the problem.

Or is it something else I'm missing?

Saying "don't root it" only works (weakly) to make sure your employees aren't doing things they shouldn't. If Alice leaves her phone behind at lunch, Eve can root it and install a bug to forward all her secret company mail to EveCo's servers, and Alice won't know when she grabs it from the cafe the next day. If her phone's known to be sufficiently hardened, AliceCo has less to be concerned about when it's lost.

That's RIM's only solid current advantage, enterprise customers that can trust their security. Anything that would give the appearance they can't offer this security anymore would totally destroy them.

Android's full disk encryption is supposed to solve that problem. You can't root her device and make it look the same (so she doesn't notice), because that would require breaking the encryption.

I think Android already supports full disk encryption.

If there is a lot of work to do, then that's a good thing - it offers a place where RIM's engineers can provide value to the android platform that you can't get anywhere else.

It might take time, but considering that BB10 isn't arriving anytime soon. To contrast, Sony announced their first Android phone in Nov '09, and shipped it in April '10.

Had RIM seen the writing on the wall could they have had a RIM Android phone around the same time BB10 is supposed to release?

> The idea: abandon the BlackBerry OS 10 fiasco and adopt the upcoming Windows Phone 8 software instead. That’s basically the route Nokia took, opting to abandon Symbian in favor of Windows to power high-end phones.

And how is that working out for Nokia?

anecdotal-y: I've seen more Nokia smartphones in the northeast (Boston-NYC-Washington DC corridor which I travel through pretty often) post-windows switch than before. Maybe it's the marketing push from AT&T that has helped them sell more smartphone units now vs. in the past

The Nokia phones are more visible now, the industrial design is quite striking, but they are selling in far smaller numbers than ever.

Hold on, let me look up the sales numbers using my Palm Treo.

A pity RIM rejected this - still, once their stock tanks further, Microsoft may just buy them out. Combined with a Nokia acquisition, they might be able to put together a strong mobile presence in both the consumer and enterprise sectors.

If you have two lame horses and you glue them together do you get:

1. A race horse, or 2. Two sticky lame horses

"Just because you tie two rocks together doesn't make them float" - Andy Grove

On another note, there's a very real possibility the Canadian government would be nationalistic enough to refuse Microsoft permission to buy them out, even if they offered.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/06/29/andrew-coyne-...

I may be in danger of being labelled a Microsoft fanboy here, but I think Windows Phone is (or has potential to be) a good software platform, and Microsoft has got the money (and I think the will) to stick with it for a while - RIM would mostly be useful to them for their enterprise software stack, and as a hardware manufacturer.

Badly needed cash? RIM has 2 billion.

And with 10k employees a burn-rate at something like $150M/month.