OSLO: BlackBerry the Canadian leading phone maker joined hands with IBM, Samsung and Secusmart to make a big return to the tablet market. For this purpose BlackBerry has unveiled SecuTablet, developed by Secusmart and IBM for a German government department.
The tablet is based on a Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5, with 16GB storage and LTE. This means, in terms of specs, the SecuTablet will offer a 10.5in 2560×1600 screen, octa-core Exynos 5 processor, baked-in fingerprint sensor and a 7,900mAh battery.
The SecuTablet doesn’t care much about hardware specs, and has instead gone big on the software side of things.
BlackBerry, which acquired German company Secusmart last year, boasts that the SecuTablet supplements the SecuSuite for BlackBerry 10 portfolio and can be seamlessly integrated into existing SecuSuite deployments.
Samsung’s Knox security suite is also onboard, while IBM has provided the secure app wrapping technology for adding a layer of security to personal apps including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and WhatsApp.
Stefan Hefter, senior management consultant at IBM, said: “The SecuTablet closes a supply gap and opens up for government and administrations an opportunity to derive greater benefit from digitisation and the mobile internet, with system integration as a fundamental success factor.
“We have contributed our longstanding expertise as a system integrator for mobile solutions. The technology used to make mobile apps secure by means of so-called wrapping has already proven its worth in the United States.”
An unmodified Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5 retails for around $500, but the SecuTablet will cost around €2,250 including the Secusmart MicroSD encryption card, bundled security software and a year’s maintenance contract.
The SecuTablet is aimed at “international public-sector markets and enterprises”, and BlackBerry said the device is undergoing certification at the German Federal Office for Information Security for the German VS-NfD (classified – for official use only) security rating.
