Research in Motion CEO Thorsten Heins, speaking in an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, has said that RIM is considering licensing BlackBerry 10 to other hardware developers because the company doesn’t “…have the economy of scale to compete against the guys who crank out 60 handsets a year.”
“We have to differentiate and have a focused platform. To deliver BB10 we may need to look at licensing it to someone who can do this at a way better cost proposition than I can do it. There’s different options we could do that we’re currently investigating.”
Heins has made similar remarks concerning BlackBerry in the past but his previous comments on the subject have not been this definite. BlackBerry 10 being licensed is far from a given though. Heins went on to say:
You could think about us building a reference system, and then basically licensing that reference design, have others build the hardware around it – either it’s a BlackBerry or it’s something else being built on the BlackBerry platform. We’re investigating this and it’s way too early to get into any details. We have to also model this from a finance perspective – that’s why we’re working with the financial advisers to see if we do this where would it take the company. Either we do it ourselves or we do it with a partner. But we will not abandon the subscriber base.”
Source: AllThingsD