BlackBerry may have signed an agreement with Amazon gaining access to the internet retailer’s app store for mobile devices and the deal could be announced as early as today, new reports have claimed.
According to The Wall Street Journal, BlackBerry has signed the deal because it believes that availability of apps from Amazon App Store will boost its mobile sales and on top of that offloading the apps ecosystem tasks to Amazon will allow it to get back on track with its government and enterprise clients for its security offerings.
“We can leverage what [Amazon] can offer,” said John Chen, BlackBerry’s chief executive, said in an interview notes WSJ.
“I do not have to spend time, energy and money” developing apps that Amazon offers, Chen added. “Given I want to financially turn around the company and focus on the enterprise space, this is perfect for us.”
Amazon App Store currently houses over 240,000 apps and combine them with BlackBerry’s app store strength of 130,000 apps, BlackBerry customers will gain access to over 370,000 apps. In comparison Apple App Store and Google Play Store each offer over a million apps.
BlackBerry has revealed that all new devices loaded with latest version of BlackBerry 10, which is to be released in autumn, will be preloaded with Amazon App Store. Currently BlackBerry smartphone users can download apps from Amazon’s store, but the process is somewhat complicated.
