For the past few weeks, there is a sudden influx of rumors that pointing to a new Android-based slider smartphone from BlackBerry codenamed as “Venice”. The device apparently will be released by November this year and this is supported by a recent report coming from phone’s supply chain in Taiwan.
Interestingly though, the report stated that there will actually be several Android BlackBerry phones coming to the market. The story goes that BlackBerry has roped in Compal Electronics and Winstron as its production partners in addition to existing relationship that the company already have with Foxconn.
Another interesting point that the report has mentioned is that the responsibility of all these three BlackBerry production partners not only includes expenses for R&D (which is nothing out of ordinary) but also marketing, and channel distribution. It isn’t clear if this means that BlackBerry is following the same route as Nokia who will be licensing their phone designs and brand name to other companies but will not market and sell those Nokia-branded phones itself.
In another report, BlackBerry apparently has registered two domain names in form of AndroidSecured.com and AndroidSecured.net. This further support the rumours that we have been hearing regarding BlackBerry Android smartphones since these domain names pointed to not only the operating system but also security which is one of BlackBerry’s biggest strength.
Being the most popular mobile operating system in the world, Android is certainly not an easy market for BlackBerry to tap on if the company is really intending to compete in it. Hence, BlackBerry certainly need something to make its Android devices shine and it goes without saying that the company have to play its cards right.
[Source: DigiTimes, Evleaks TheDomains, BlackBerry Blog]
