The struggling handset maker has just struck a licensing deal with the massive online marketplace.
BlackBerry Ltd. has now announced its latest technology news which involves a new deal with Amazon.com Inc., which will give the handset manufacturer the ability to offer 240,000 Android applications from the app store at Amazon.
The move will give BlackBerry 10 mobile device users the ability to download some of the most popular Android apps.
The technology news will become active as of this fall, when BlackBerry 10 users will be able to head to Amazon to be able to choose from some of the most popular consumer focused applications to their devices. There will also be a focus on mobile app development for productivity applications and those meant for enterprises. This was announced in a statement recently made by the company based in Ontario, Canada.
The technology news is specifically good for users of mobile devices based on the BB10 platform.
Some of the mobile apps that the BlackBerry 10 device users will be able to find at the Amazon app store will include Candy Crush Saga, Groupon, Minecraft, Pinterest, and Netflix. The applications will become available in the fall and this capability will coincide with the release of the next version of the company’s operating system, BlackBerry 10.3.
This is one of a wave of moves that the struggling smartphone maker is taking on in order to be able to reinvent itself under John Chen, its new chief exec. He has come into this top spot at a time in which the company has lost nearly all of its share of the smartphone market to Samsung Electronics and their Galaxy devices, as well as to the iPhones from Apple.
It is Chen’s intention to remain competitive within the smartphone marketplace and he has been making many recent technology news headlines through his dramatic changes to the company, particularly in the area of machine to machine (M2M) communications. The QNX software from BlackBerry has already managed to become highly successful throughout the auto manufacturing industry, powering a number of systems – such as electronics – in a range of different vehicles. This next move is meant to expand the company’s reach even further.