London: Chief Executive of Research in Motion (RIM), Thorsten Heins has said that manufacturers such as Sony or Samsung could license the new BlackBerry operating system.
Heins claimed that as the troubled technology giant is not being able compete with larger manufacturers, so the firm needs to look at how to get more budget smartphones into the market.
“We don’t have the economy of scale to compete against the guys who crank out 60 handsets a year. We have to differentiate and have a focused platform. To deliver BB10 we may need to look at licensing it to someone who can do this at a way better cost proposition than I can do it. There are different options we could do that we’re currently investigating,” Heins told The Telegraph.
“You could think about us building a reference system, and then basically licensing that reference design, have others build the hardware around it, either it’s a BlackBerry or it’s something else being built on the BlackBerry platform. We’re investigating this and it’s way too early to get into any details,” he added.
BlackBerry’s parent company, Research in Motion, which once traded shares at over USD 140, are now languishing at USD 7.25, the report said.
Denying that Blackberry is “in a trough”, Heins argued that the current difficulties are due to a once-in-a-decade change over to new operating system, BlackBerry 10.
“We know that BlackBerry OS7 was a great platform, but it would not carry us to where we wanted to be tomorrow, with the full mobile computing experience,” he said.
Heins insisted that the BB10 would allow “true multitasking”, potentially running a car’s navigation, entertainment and gaming systems for the whole family.
ANI
First Published: Sunday, August 05, 2012, 17:55