Why It Would Be A Mistake For BlackBerry, Or Most Smartphone Vendors, To Go Android

Smartphone Sales 2013

I keep on hearing this speculation on what would have happened if BlackBerry had just gone with Android instead of developing BlackBerry 10. I have answered this quite a few times personally and BlackBerry’s CEO Thorsten Heins has also stated that it would have just been an arms race of small hardware differentiators. Mary at ZDNet does a great job of breaking down in a nutshell why it would be and continues to be a bad idea for any vendor. The main problem is that Samsung is the only company really making any money on Android. Just to give you an idea Samsung MADE 94.7% of all Android profits in Q1 2013. That left LG with 2.5% and the last 2.7% for the remaining Android vendors like Sony, HTC and Google’s Motorola. On top of that Samsung is making the money because they make the screens, processors, and flash memory that goes into the phones.

In other words BlackBerry going to Android would have probably been a unmitigated disaster…

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