BlackBerry is targeting small and medium enterprises in India, as well as a tie-up with Samsung, to further boost revenue from the software and services segment in the country, said Sunil Lalvani, BlackBerry’s managing director for India.
Lalvani said that BlackBerry currently have a 40% share in the Indian enterprise market, which comprises 7,000 large enterprises. He added that the increase in market share had primarily been driven by its latest cross-platform BES12 solution, with the Android platform contributing the most to this growth.
BlackBerry’s efforts to shift its focus towards software and services from selling smartphones has started paying off not only in India, but around the world. BlackBerry India posted a high double-digit growth in software and services revenue for a period of three months, which ended on 28th February, 2015.
Globally, it reported a 20% expansion during this period. Lalvani said that BlackBerry’s other enterprise services i.e. ‘BBM Meeting’ and ‘BBM Protected’ had also witnessed a great demand in India.
The company also saw an uptake in the carrier billing model, wherein its charges are added to the operator’s bill. At present, it is working with Vodafone and Idea Cellular on these models and is hoping to add two more operators to the list in the coming months.
Lalvani also revealed that the company is in advanced talks with Samsung to integrate the marketing teams of Samsung KNOX and BlackBerry’s sales force.
Lalvani said,
“Wherever there’s a possibility for Samsung to position their devices but needs layers of security, it would bring BlackBerry security architecture.”
