Following rumors that BlackBerry may dump its own OS in favor of going all-Android (which it later denied), it appears that the company is at the very least aligning itself to support Android apps with the latest 10.3.2 BBOS, fully supporting access to the Amazon Appstore for users in the United States.
As noted on the official Inside BlackBerry blog, BBOS 10.3.2 has started rolling out to American BlackBerry Classic users on Verizon and T-Mobile networks, as well as to AT&T"s BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 customers, with other U.S. carriers and the rest of the world to follow "in the coming weeks".
Eric Lai, a social media manager for BlackBerry, detailed of the update:
With this update, all U.S. BlackBerry users will get to enjoy a fresh look, improved features, even stronger security and anti-theft protection (BlackBerry Protect!), and access to the Amazon Appstore, with hundreds of thousands of Android apps. More power, more privacy, and even more productivity.
With a market share of only 0.6% in the United States and less than 1% in most other countries around the world, it makes sense for BlackBerry to tackle the "app gap" where it can, as developers simply can"t be bothered to support porting, or updating popular apps over to the OS with such a limited user base.
Earlier this year, BlackBerry users in the African, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Middle Eastern markets received the 10.2.1 update that gave them access to the Amazon Appstore. Meanwhile users in the U.S. who managed to tweak their device to get early access have been advised to delete Amazon App store access before updating to 10.3.2.
Source: Inside BlackBerry via UberGizmo