BlackBerry Launches Security Platform for iPhone and Android

Blackberry has lost its smartphone market to Apple and Google a few  years ago. With its new security platform, it hopes to find a top spot  again being a distant fourth now and losing its market on the hardware  side.

The mobile company is hoping its acclaimed security software might be  its ticket to success — even if it means supporting rivals’ devices.

BlackBerry on Tuesday introduced a new service called “Secure Work  Space,” which allows mobile enterprises iPhone and Android users to  toggle between personal and corporate modes.

Secure Work Space is aimed at giving companies control over the data  that flows over their networks, even on a user’s personal phone.  Corporate email, calendars, contacts and intranets are cordoned off,  and IT departments can add or remove other apps from that corporate  section without affecting any personal information.

That separation ensures that users can’t copy a message from the  corporate profile and paste it into the personal one. Just as  crucially also, malware infecting the personal side of the phone won’t  make its way into corporate data.

The setup is similar to BlackBerry Balance, which comes standard on  BlackBerry 10 devices.

As BlackBerry has declined, competitors like Apple (AAPL, Fortune  500), Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) and Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500)  have on the other end worked hard to improve their own security  capabilities. Samsung launched its own “Knox” system for the new  Galaxy S4, which works much like Secure Work Space. with this, there’s  room in the market for a trusted multi-platform solution — an Oracle  (ORCL, Fortune 500) of mobile devices.

An analyst isn’t convinced that BlackBerry will be the only company in  the field though, but it still has the chance to become that trusted  solution. Despite all of its troubles on the hardware side,  BlackBerry’s reputation as a company dedicated to security endures, as  CEO Thorsten Heins has made sure to play up the company’s history in  the space.

A full switch to software would be “messy,” though, according to  Hoffman. He said that BlackBerry would be taking 95% of its revenue,  hardware, and focus on the 5%. According to him it would be a pretty  big corporate transition to become software-only, but they’re up for  the challenge.

BlackBerry dipped a toe into the software development field back in  2011, when the company launched an experimental product that allows  corporate IT staffers to manage multiple mobile devices — including  iOS and Android — through the same interface. At the time, the  company insisted that it wasn’t shifting its strategy away from  hardware.

Two years later, however, BlackBerry is still struggling on the device  side and sorely needs a bright spot. If security software can be  successful for BlackBerry, a bit of a strategic shift could be a smart  move.

Source:  money.cnn.com