RIM’s CEO talks about the possibility of licensing

As some of you guys have probably surmised by now, RIM is not exactly in a good place at the moment. In the past there have been talks about RIM either selling out, or perhaps licensing its technology to help them gain more market share and to stay afloat and it seems that licensing could be what RIM is considering for their upcoming Blackberry 10 OS. RIM, like Apple, has traditionally made their own hardware and software but in an interview with The Telegraph, RIM’s CEO, Thorsten Heins, had this to say regarding the possibility of licensing:

“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’s different options we could do that we’re currently investigating.”

“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.”

RIM’s first Blackberry 10 device is expected to be launched this year, so for those still looking forward to hardware from RIM, you’re still in luck, but what do you guys think about the idea of RIM licensing out Blackberry 10? Would you like to see future Blackberry 10 devices made by manufacturers such as Samsung, HTC, Huawei, etc.?

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones, Tablets
Tags: BlackBerry 10, RIM