BlackBerry Acquires Movirtu to Enhance BYOD Support

BlackBerry has announced that it has acquired Movirtu, a provider of virtual identity solutions for mobile operators that allows multiple numbers to be active on a single device. This improves device management in bring-your-own device (BYOD) and corporate owned personally enabled (COPE) environments. However, the acquisition details have not been disclosed at the moment.

In plain words, the company's Virtual SIM platform allows one handset to have a phone number for business calls, and another number for personal communications. However, the two numbers will be get the bill separately.

John Chen, CEO, BlackBerry said, "The acquisition of Movirtu complements our core strategy of providing additional value added services, and it will leverage our key assets, including our BES platform, along with our existing global infrastructure which is connected to a large number of mobile operators around the world."

The acquisition complements BlackBerry's Secure Work Space, BlackBerry Balance and other partitioning technologies, which give employees the freedom and privacy they want for their personal use while delivering the security and management needed for business use. With Movirtu, employees can switch between profiles for calls, data and messages, while on their home network and in roaming situations.

Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO, Movirtu said, "BlackBerry is the best partner to help us carry forward our vision of redefining the mobile experience by introducing virtual identities."

The new services that BlackBerry will offer following the acquisition, will be made available from mobile operators. BlackBerry will make Movirtu's mobile identity system available for all mobile operating systems.

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