Samsung sold over 23 million Galaxy S4 units since last April, so contracts for a few thousand phones seem like ripples to them, but may make waves for others.
Samsung just closed a deal with the United States military to sell 7,000 Galaxy Note II smartphones for use in its “Nett Warrior System,” which uses the phone as a chest mounted device for use in localization awareness and communications while on the battlefield.
While it may appear to just be a drop in the bucket for Samsung, this will have far reaching implications for Blackberry, who has relied on Government contracts just to stay afloat the past few years. This deal—alongside a pending deal with the NSA—will strike a major blow to Blackberry’s image as the most secure and reliable option for tightly regulated organizations.
Blackberry was able to ink a recent deal with the Pentagon, though, so this doesn’t take all the wind out of their sails, but it does signal a change in current, and Blackberry has already been swimming upstream. Now that the US Government well has begun to run dry, they will need to turn towards the consumer market, which has never been a large flow of income for the Canadian company.
That may change with the big improvements in the recent updates to the BB10 operating system—which enables a much more seamless integration with the Android app library—and the potential for a big splash with the rumored 64-Bit Octa core phone coming later this year, but they have a lot of work to do in order to turn the tide against a lot of businesses and customers that have soured on the brand over the past decade.
Prior to the acquisition of Motorola Mobility, Lenovo was looking at buying Blackberry, but the offer was turned down. Blackberry does still have value as a hardware manufacturer and has a large patent portfolio, which seems like it may wet the whistle for other potential acquisitions.
The fact that Blackberry is still around is considered a miracle by many, but they are running out of employees to lay off and can no longer spend money like water, so unless they can stop sinking, 2014 may be the last year of blackberry as we know it.
Source: BGR, US ARMY, Berry Review
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