Your New BlackBerry Tablet is Really a Samsung Tablet

BlackBerry keeps on ticking along — and to prove that it’s still a thing, CEO John Chen announced a new tablet.

No, it’s not the return of the PlayBook or the Son of PlayBook or a reboot of the PlayBook. BlackBerry’s cleaned its slate by offering a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.5 modified by Secusmart, a security company the Waterloo, Canada-based purchased last year.

(That’s a lot to digest in that last paragraph — BlackBerry getting back into the tablet market, the tablet’s really a Samsung and that BlackBerry’s still buying companies. We’ll give you a moment.)

The tablet, dubbed “SecuTABLET”, uses Secusmart’s encryption technology to secure communications between users of the device. It was also made in conjunction with IBM for its “secure silos” feature which allows users to access social media sites without worrying about exposing sensitive data to malicious apps. IBM, you’ll remember, is also also partnered with Apple to provide enterprise services to their customers.

Consumers of the SecuTABLET are expected to be government and corporate users. Secusmart reportedly modified devices running BlackBerry 10 to members of the German government, including Chancellor Angela Merkel following revelations by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden about the agency’s activities regarding foreign heads of state. (It’s also worth mentioning that BlackBerry was involved in a controversy involving how it handled the secure communications of its Indian users in 2012.)

Via BloombergBusiness; The Verge via The Wall Street Journal. Photo by Pierre Lecourt/Flickr.