BlackBerry (formerly RIM) has been struggling in the smartphone market, having recently fallen into 4th place behind even Microsoft’s fledgling foray into that space. Despite the recent release and generally positive reviews of their 10-series phones, the mobile device manufacturer ceded their corporate dominance years ago to the crushing flood of iOS and Android devices primarily because of the company’s failure to stay competitive on the software side. In a move that has analysts scratching their head, BlackBerry is now making a play via software with a new platform called “Secure Work Spaces” which aims to allow for peaceful and secure co-existance of personal and corporate data on smartphones, including iOS and Android devices.

What this means for you:

Corporations struggle with allowing their employees to use corporate phones for business, and vice versa, with corporate phones and personal usage, primarily because the risk of security breaches is much higher on the personal side. BlackBerry’s new platform is designed to create a partition that keeps the two work spaces (see what they did there?) separate, giving enterprises complete control over corporate data without the distasteful invasion and control over the personal aspects of devices. There are other companies working on this same concept, and have been in the space longer, but BlackBerry’s reputation (and probably some nostalgic sentiment) may win the heart’s and minds of corporate IT managers. Seeing as BlackBerry has historically been a company that depends on hardware sales for revenue, many think that BlackBerry is either making a desperate or cunning pivot to the software space, knowing that there is little chance they can recover any ground in the mobile device race.