Polish government should buy a BlackBerry - naTemat

If you want to Polish companies had a real chance to become a multibillion-dollar market for mobile devices, and the Polish government successfully defended itself against the depredations of the U.S. National Security Agency, our government should take over the BlackBerry and now would be the perfect time for doing so.

What is BlackBerry?

BlackBerry, until January this year, known as the Research In Motion (RIM), the Canadian manufacturer of technologically advanced mobile phones with the nearly 30-year tradition. Just as Apple controls both the operating system on the phone and its very structure from the same hardware. The greatest triumphs of BlackBerry shone at the end of the first decade of the third millennium. For many users, especially among employees of multinational corporations and public administration, the BlackBerry has become synonymous with reliable, efficient and secure your smartphone, perfectly suited for reading and sending all kinds of messages.

There were several reasons for this: the pioneering use of technology push email, full encryption of transmitted data and a hardware keyboard novel, which really could write comfortably, quickly and above all flawlessly. In 2007, one in ten smartphones sold in the world come from the stables of the character blackberries, and BlackBerry has become the most valued Canadian company, with the share price of 124.51 USD. Even better was a year later. Share of the global smartphone market reached 19.5%, and the share price exceeded $ 138. BlackBerry peak popularity was the third quarter of 2009. 20.7% of smartphones sold in the quarter, a BlackBerry, 17.1% are iPhones, and 3.5% worked under the Android operating system.

Then it was just worse. Currently, the share of the smartphone market is only 1.7%, and the share price remains at $ 6 apiece. A company that was once worth more than $ 70 billion, today receives takeover offer at 4.5 – 5 billion. How did this happen? BlackBerry, then even Research In Motion, in 2010 the owner bought QNX operating system. QNX was to later become the basis for a future version of the operating system that RIM wanted to use in their next-generation tablets and smartphones. It was the right move. QNX, a relative of a full-fledged Unix operating system real-time, giving RIM a technological advantage over other manufacturers of smartphones, above all, allow true multitasking.

Unfortunately, the launch of a new generation of smartphones is constantly delayed, and consumers, informed about the upcoming change in the operating system already in
2011, did not want to buy phones that were becoming increasingly outdated in comparison to the multimedia competition cars. It was only in January this year. phones based on BlackBerry 10, which is on QNX, saw the light of day. For many existing BlackBerry users but it was already too late.

Why giant Polish government years ago?

The main threat to the new players in the market of mobile devices there are no better products competition, but held its patents. The textbook example of what led the U.S. patent law, a patent from Apple to use squares with rounded corners as icons for their devices running iOS. In a world where even such dubious innovations can be patented, the only defense against attacks from competitors, which result in fines of up to or hundreds of millions of dollars, or prohibition of sales of models, is having a large number of its own patents.

Polish small and medium-sized enterprises in this industry will never be able to “extra money” to several thousand patents. Before you reach the appropriate number of falling victim to the current big players or companies specialized in buying up patents and downloading for no tribute from the other. The only solution is to create the Polish government umbrella in the form of a sufficiently high number of patents, and the BlackBerry is extremely cheap and quick option to achieve this.

BlackBerry participated in the Rockstar consortium, which in 2011 bought 6,000 patents from Nortel Networks . In addition, the BlackBerry itself has its own 4,200 patents and has submitted another 3,300 that are still considered. If you take into account that Google paid for the acquisition of Motorola Mobility $ 12.5 billion, and the company had 17,500 patents and 7,500 patent applications, is investing 5 to $ 6 billion by the Polish government in the BlackBerry seems to be the most reasonable. Remember, too, that the BlackBerry smartphone is the only manufacturer in the world, has a significant share in the mobile phone market, which has fallen prey to accusations of patent for the last 10 years, which shows the defensive effectiveness of their intellectual capital.

Second, for many perhaps more important reason is to ensure the sovereignty of the Polish computer. BlackBerry continues to be a leader in secure mobile communications. This was confirmed by the results of this year’s auction even if the supplier of mobile phones with a higher standard of security, which the German government decided in favor of the company SECUsmart, offering devices based on BlackBerry. I trust that the scale espionage activities the U.S. National Security Agency, revealed by the materials made public by Edward Snowden, she even the most clunky, the great importance has access to the proven, secure and reliable IT technology. And achieving this goal becomes more likely the more elements of this infrastructure comes from local producers. The government could develop a secure Internet communications infrastructure created by the BlackBerry, including its achievements of Polish cryptographers. Isolated, internal version of the system could become an effective weapon in the fight against unbridled surveillance from the U.S. and it’s one-third of the annual cost of servicing the public debt. Simply buy a BlackBerry.