RIM CEO Thorsten Heins recently spoke with The Telegraph, sharing details of the company’s struggles, goals, and its plans for the future. Yesterday, we talked about what Heins had to say about the potential for licensing BlackBerry 10 to other device manufacturers, but even going in the BB10 direction wasn’t always a sure thing for the company. Heins also talks about considering dropping BlackBerry software in favor of another company’s platform, and why RIM ultimately rejected the idea.
Although it’s something Heins reveals RIM looked into, in the end he says it “took the conscious decision not to go Android”. While such a move would have saved the company tons of development time, Heins believes that Android isn’t adept at delivering the kind of experience BlackBerry users want. He specifically notes its proficiency at gaming and the consumption of media, but sees BlackBerry users as a less passive group, more interested in conducting business on their phones than playing Words with Friends and watching Netflix.
We could split hairs and start citing plenty of productivity software available for Android, but we can see the point Heins is trying to make here; at the least, there’s an impression that BlackBerry is a more “serious” platform, and having a user base which believes that can be a valuable thing – one that might be lost should RIM switch gears to Android.
Still, it’s neat to think about what could have been, should RIM have made its fateful decision the other way. Now we just have to wait for BlackBerry 10 to arrive and learn whether or not RIM made the right call.
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