Software Licensing Featured Articles

BlackBerry Uses Software Monetization to Reinvent Itself as EMM and IoT Player

By Laura Stotler, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Remember BlackBerry (News - Alert), a company that once had the reputation as the leading global personal device manufacturer? The days of BlackBerry’s dominance as a hardware player are long gone, thanks to competition from Apple (News - Alert) and Android. And while BlackBerry still plays a niche role in the hardware space, the company has managed to remain profitable, driven by its high-margin, high-growth software unit.

According to a recent analysis by Forbes, BlackBerry’s software revenues come from a broad range of offerings, including enterprise mobility management (EMM) and embedded system software and security solutions. The company has wisely shifted its revenue model to software monetization as its hardware offerings have been steadily squeezed out of the market. That move has seemingly paid off, since BlackBerry’s areas of focus are high-growth markets.

Ovum (News - Alert) forecasts the EMM software market will grow by nearly fourfold by 2019, reaching just under $10 billion. The research firm cites the whopping uptake in mobile devices and services as the primary growth trigger. And BlackBerry is currently the largest EMM player with a 19.2 percent market share after acquiring its rival Good Technology (News - Alert).

BlackBerry also made a strategic acquisition of QNX Software Systems in 2010, making the company a key embedded software player catering to the automotive infotainment sector. The explosive growth of IoT and M2M communications bodes well for BlackBerry’s success in this area as well, particularly since the company has been monetizing its software patents as a revenue source. This interesting approach, which is being accomplished through collaborative licensing agreements, has the potential to pay off since BlackBerry’s patent portfolio is largely centered on secure communications, IoT and wireless technologies.

While Forbes contends that BlackBerry’s diverse software portfolio and focus on monetization could prove risky for the company as competition in the mobile space heats up, the strategy has worked out well so far. By shifting its business model away from security and devices and toward becoming a software supplier for mobile platforms, BlackBerry is in the process of reinventing itself as a major software contender in the age of IoT.