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发帖数: 1034 | 1 Posted by Ryan Whitwam in News
One of the less exciting (but still important) announcements at Google I/O
2014 was that Google will be adopting part of Samsung KNOX as a security
platform in Android itself. KNOX, which is currently only on Samsung devices
, is a business-oriented security solution that keeps work and personal data
separate and secure on a single device. Sounds pretty good, right? Not to
BlackBerry CEO John Chen, but you know what is good enough? You'll never
guess – a BlackBerry. Obviously.
john-chen-knox-security
Chen offers empty platitudes to lay the groundwork for his attack on Google
and Samsung, saying how nice it is that Android is finally getting more
secure. It's the right direction, Chen says, "but far from enough." The
almost patronizing tone of his recent statements seems completely at odds
with the true state of the industry right now. Reading these posts, you'd
think BlackBerry was still a leading player in smartphones rather than a
company struggling to survive. It brings to mind something about throwing
stones and glass houses.
The argument Chen is making for BlackBerry is essentially that the entire
BlackBerry platform is secure end-to-end. Well, unless you're in India, but
I digress. Samsung KNOX, he says, is a fortress built "upon an insecure
foundation." Burn. He also points out there are tens of millions of secure
Blackberrys and only a few million phones with KNOX. While that may be true,
there are going to be many more very soon. How much longer can sales in
Indonesia and Africa prop the company up as Apple and Google continue to
dominate?
I want BlackBerry to exist because competition is a good thing, but this
kind of banter is not encouraging. Blackberry's time would be better spent
improving its platform than complaining about Google muscling in on its turf
. The fact that Blackberry even bothered to take a swing at the KNOX
announcement makes the leadership look scared. Blackberry got touchscreens
wrong, it got apps wrong, and now all it has left is security. That's a nice
feature to have, but it's far from enough. |
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