Journalism of Courage
Faced with dropping sales of its much-hyped new devices all over the world, BlackBerry on Tuesday announced an update bringing in a lot of features demanded by its users. However, the most interesting feature in the new 10.2.1 version its BlackBerry 10 OS is that it allows users to natively install Android apps from third party sources.
This might solve one of the biggest grouses BlackBerry users have had with its new and old platforms. But it also opens up what is considered to be the most secure mobile platform to vulnerabilities that could come embedded in unverified Android apps.
Interestingly, the press release does not mention this minor detail, which could in effect be the biggest strategic shift the company has made in recent years. Advait Vaidya, BlackBerry India’s head of product management, clarified that BB10 users will not be able to download apps from the Google Play Store, and will have to do so from ‘trusted’ third party sources.
