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With this week’s Amazon announcement, that shift is complete. BlackBerry has essentially opted to purchase Amazon’s consumer apps and services ecosystem than build its own. Considering how their previous attempts have fared to date, this is a very smart move to shore up its consumer offering — important for the BYOD customer — so it can focus on the enterprise apps and services that will fuel its future business. But the net result is a further deprecation of native BlackBerry 10 development and BlackBerry World. N4BB reports that it is unlikely that Mallick will be replaced, and I agree. As one former BlackBerry employee put it to me today, BlackBerry “no longer has a need for that kind of BD organization.”

(Interesting footnote: this is not the first time BlackBerry has been presented with this type of licensing deal. About a year ago it was rumoured that BlackBerry was in negotiations to get Google services on BlackBerry 10. The catch? BlackBerry had to swallow having the Play Store on BlackBerry 10, effectively killing the native BB10 ecosystem. For a variety of reasons, the deal ultimately fell through. The lesson as always: BlackBerry is a different company under Chen.)

The one caveat is of course enterprise app development. BlackBerry stated during its Amazon announcement that it would soon unveil a new “enterprise application partner program” for corporate developers, ISVs, and system integrators, to develop “business-class functionality and enhance users’ productivity, communication and collaboration.” Native BlackBerry 10 developers currently not building these apps should take a long, hard look at their future plans — either in making a switch to enterprise and productivity app development, or prioritizing other platforms. We’ve already seen popular consumer developers opt for Android ports of their apps rather than invest in native BlackBerry 10 development, what incentive do they have now with a lack of organizational support from BlackBerry and a competing app store on the same platform?

For it’s part, BlackBerry has reached out to us to say that more will be revealed about its newfound enterprise/productivity focus at a developer web jam next week. We’ll let you know the details as soon as we have them.

We have received information that there is a total strategy change when it comes to applications. BlackBerry confirmed a few things off the cuff:

No Google Play Services – Amazon’s store builds around the need for them with their own services
The Amazon Appstore will be the base Android app, not a native experience
A unified App Store was NOT even considered
Native games and ‘Fun Apps’ will not be featured in the BlackBerry World Carousel
Developers can still submit native apps to BlackBerry World – but BlackBerry wants consumer apps in Amazon.

WATERLOO Ontario/TORONTO (Reuters) - BlackBerry Ltd posted a narrower-than-expected quarterly loss on Thursday as the troubled smartphone maker's turnaround efforts started to pay off, raising hope that its chief executive can deliver on a pledge to return the company to steady profits.

BlackBerry shares surged more than 10 percent after the company said it spent less cash than many expected in its fiscal first quarter, ended May 31, and its gross profit margin rose.

"The short trade is over in this name, for now," said BGC analyst Colin Gillis. "They've got enough liquidity, and they've given us clear profitability targets."

BlackBerry said its low-cost Z3 smartphone was selling well in Indonesia and that its services business, which manages its own and rival mobile devices on the internal networks of large organizations, had won back some customers from rivals.

Chen wants BlackBerry to remain a competitor in the smartphone segment, but he is focused on its services business, which made up 54 percent of revenue in the quarter, up from 26 percent only a year earlier. The company works with hundreds of large companies and government agencies to securely manage their networks.

As the company rolls out new phones later this year, its revenue growth is likely to be driven more by its smartphones, but the services business is likely to drive higher margins, Chen told reporters.

The last we heard, EnStream, a joint mobile payment venture between Rogers, TELUS and Bell, was signing up Canada’s largest credit union, Desjardin, as a mobile payment partner.

news of out its camp is that BlackBerry has signed a three-year deal to provide the payment infrastructure to communicate between NFC-enabled smartphones and their partner banks, including Royal Bank, TD, CIBC and the aforementioned Desjardins

Mobile payments are indeed taking off in Canada, with all three carriers launching some form of NFC-based payment product this year. Rogers recently launched the suretap wallet, which allows users to pay for items using a prepaid MasterCard at any swipeless payment terminal, and Bell is already in the final stage of its own mobile wallet product. More recently, TD Canada Trust rolled out mobile credit card payments for a select number of NFC-enabled Android and BlackBerry devices, with more compatibility to come in the near future.


One thing all of these products have in common is a single-point backend infrastructure powered by EnStream. Because BlackBerry was already a partner on the client side, working with CIBC and Rogers on the first NFC-related credit card payment system in Canada, making the transition to provide communications infrastructure was not a big leap. The company, though downtrodden, is attempting to reinvent itself as the go-to facilitator of enterprise solutions, and its secure network infrastructure is still second-to-none.

BlackBerry has achieved PCI, Visa and MasterCard certification already, and according to Nicolas Dinh, Vice President of Emerging Payments, MasterCard, “BlackBerry’s involvement in the payment chain will help build trust in Canada and abroad.”

BlackBerry is not unfamiliar with the payment space, having launched BBM Money in Indonesia a couple of years ago.

BlackBerry also announced a new partnership with Samsung where BES12 will manage a wide range of Samsung KNOX smartphones and tablets. The companies will work together in regulated industries and with government customers

BlackBerry is in the midst of executing on a strong product roadmap with well-received offerings - from BES12 and BBM Protected to BlackBerry Passport and, very soon, BlackBerry Classic," said BlackBerry Executive Chairman and CEO John Chen. "Under Howard Stevens' leadership, we will work more closely with our carrier partners to put these innovative products into the hands of more customers and position BlackBerry for faster growth."

Based in BlackBerry's Slough, UK office, Mr. Stevens will report directly to Mr. Chen and starts work immediately. Mr. Stevens most recently served as general manager of the Global Telecom business unit at SAP. He also held sales leadership roles at Amdocs, a global leader in customer care and billing software for the communications industry, Vallent, a provider of performance management tools for wireless service providers, and Chernikeeff Networks, the first Cisco Systems reseller in the U.K. He also has a strong track record for revenue and margin growth, leading large organizations as well as building sales teams and processes in entrepreneurial start-up environments.

1. Server – Install VPN Authentication by BlackBerry on the same hardware or
VM image as your BlackBerry® Enterprise Server 5 (BES5), BlackBerry® Enterprise
Service 10 (BES10) or BES12. For the best performance, install the server on its
own computer or VM image.
2. Client App – Your employees may install the client app on any iOS, Android,
BlackBerry® 10 or BlackBerry OS device managed by BES5, BES10 or BES12.
App updates can be pushed to devices from the app stores.

NathanaelCulver • 4 months ago
Before I try this, I'd like to know why I need to register, and provide my cellphone number.

The real problem here is that Signal only encrypts the content of the message. It does nothing to mask where I'm am, who I'm calling or when and for how long we spoke. Metadata IS data.

What I'd really like to see is a peer-to-peer, secure Skype replacement that can be used over wifi and even routed through anonymous proxy servers. Is there such an animal?

The NSA NathanaelCulver • 3 months ago
Maybe, maybe not. It depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

If you assume an adversary who can intercept a significant chunk of global traffic, then removing a central signaling infrastructure (as Tox seems to do, at a glance, through using a DHT a la Bittorrent) doesn't necessarily achieve much. Your adversary can just track all traffic anyway. (Even onion router networks have some susceptibility to such traffic analysis, especially if latency is a concern, as with voice traffic. See e.g. http://freehaven.net/anonbib/c...

Pond (https://pond.imperialviolet.or...) is a stab at solving this for text traffic. Doing so for voice traffic strikes me as probably being hard.

Somewhat paradoxically, using a large central service like Google or Yahoo means your traffic is _less_ suspicious and less susceptible to traffic analysis, but only if those centralized services are themselves secure and trustworthy.

NathanaelCulver The NSA • 2 months ago
"...but only if those centralized servers are themselves secure and trustworthy."

Aye, and there in lies the rub. Both Google and Yahoo have a long way to go before, at least in my mind, they could be considered trustworthy. Apple, in iOS 8, has taken some steps to reestablish that trust, but to my mind it's not there yet.

I'm no expert on traffic analysis or security so I'm not sure I completely understand your comments viz. latency and traffic analysis. Are you saying that latency provides a window into which entities such as the NSA can insert themselves? And would that be only of interest to people who are, say, people of interest to the NSA. Those of us who are nobodies on the Internet, would we need to worry about that? Or is that only of concern to people whom the NSA has specifically targeted? Are we talking about something that needs to be done real time and via human intervention, or is it something a computer algorithm could do, and after-the-fact?

The gap in understanding how inadequately managed mobile devices in the workplace can contribute risk — yet not taking action to mitigate that risk is evident, as 66 percent of those surveyed acknowledge they find it difficult to keep up with current and emerging mobile threats, while 70 percent of the same respondents say they know they are more tolerant of risk than they should be with their enterprise mobility. This increases to 76 percent in BYOD environments.

"Deloitte's clients face a wide range of complex issues when assessing the adoption of new technology. From Deloitte's own research, we know that Digital Risk and in particular mobile technologies are of growing concern," said Kieran Norton, Principal, Security & Privacy, Deloitte & Touche LLP. "As the technical capabilities of connected devices increase exponentially, so do the threats to devices, data and infrastructure as well as wider risks around issues such as regulatory compliance and operational support. While clients recognize the potential upside of mobile driven innovation, at this time we still see many companies grappling with the implications of mobile technologies and finding the 'sweet spot' where new business opportunities are exploited while managing risk and balancing the tradeoff between control and user experience."

"It's startlingly clear that mobile technology has transformed daily business faster than most businesses have been able to adapt," said John Sims, President of Global Enterprise Services, BlackBerry. "Leaders at all levels of organizations around the world are realizing the very real gaps that exist in their technology infrastructure – and the potentially devastating consequences of a breach. As workforces become ever more mobile, BlackBerry leads the industry in developing solutions that provide flexibility without sacrificing security."

Visa Inc. (V), MasterCard Inc. (MA) and American Express Co. have given U.S. retailers and banks until October to adopt EMV -- which requires either a signature or a personal identification number -- or assume liability for some fraudulent transactions.