I sure hope Blackberry survives...

Blackberry has become a shadow fo what it was a few years ago, in large part because of Apple's iPhone and Google's Android devices. I can remember a time when the smartphone to get was a Blackberry one, now most consumers wouldn't even consider one.

Personally, my first smartphone was a Nokia E63, which I selected because at the time I was a big Nokia fan. That device really made me a fan of the QWERTY keyboard on smartphones and of the Symbian OS. When time came to replace the Nokia E63 I briefly considered the Nokia N8, in a way to see how having a smartphone without a QWERTY keyboard would work for me.

At the time, Nokia made Symbian open-source for a time before making it proprietary some time later. To be honest, I really was rooting for Nokia and Symbian to be able to make themselves strong players along Google's Android on the smartphone arena. But that didn't come to pass since Nokia went and made a deal with Microsoft, and later sell its mobile division all together to Microsoft to manufacture Windows Phones. That was a big disappointment, since I'd love to see Nokia move to make Android powered devices if Symbian didn't take off.

Blackberry has suffered the same as Nokia, but it seems that it will just stop manufacturing devices itself. Instead it will license it's brand to others to manufacture devices and on the software side of things. On the software side, it seems that it will license it's Blackberry 10 and it's security software to harden Android devices security. For the time being, it seems that it will not disappear, and at least it will keep their relevance on the mind of people looking for secure smartphones.

To be honest, if Blackberry had started manufacturing Android smartphones earlier I'd move to it when Nokia moved to making Windows Phones. Not only that, it could have actually taken a big share of the market of the premium Android phones from Samsung has with it's Galaxy series of smartphones.

While I agree with this Wired article that states the Blackberry won't disappear, I'm just sure of it on the medium term. On the long run, Blackberry's survival depends on it actually finding costumers for it's offerings. And while it has a good odds, it's not something all that certain.