BlackBerry gains access to Amazon’s 240,000 apps
TORONTO — BlackBerry has signed a deal with Amazon.com to gain access to its 240,000 Android apps, expanding its offerings on the company’s mobile devices in a bid to boost sales.
Access to the Amazon app store, whose vast array of offerings includes Candy Crush Saga and Netflix, will be available with the launch of the BlackBerry 10.3 operating system this fall, the Waterloo, Ont.-based company said Wednesday.
This strategic move allows BlackBerry to provide enhanced offerings customers have been asking for while focusing its own resources on developing secure enterprise solutions, CEO John Chen said.
“We’ve listened to our customers and have taken this important step to deliver on their needs, while executing on our strategy,” he said in a statement.
This is in line with Chen’s moves to position BlackBerry — which is losing share in the global smartphone market to Apple and Android-platform devices — as a leader in mobile-device management. He has also been shifting the company’s focus from devices to services.
Steven Li, technology analyst at Raymond James in Toronto, calls the deal a “positive move” for BlackBerry that “will for sure help strengthen their ecosystem.”
But, he said, it’s unclear whether it will give the company any long-term boost. Adding more apps and functionality to its devices is “just one of a million things they have to do.”
Research firm IDC forecasts that BlackBerry’s share of the global smartphone market will drop to 0.8 per cent this year, then to 0.3 per cent by 2018.