Blackberry 2015 Annual Report Download - page 43

Table of Contents
34
Even if the Company’s patents are held to be enforceable, others may be able to design around these patents or develop
products or services similar to the Company’s products or services that do not infringe the Company’s patents.
In addition to patents, the Company relies on, among other things, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, confidentiality
procedures and contractual provisions to protect its proprietary rights. While the Company enters into confidentiality and non-
disclosure agreements with its employees, consultants, contract manufacturers, customers, potential customers and others to
attempt to limit access to and distribution of proprietary and confidential information, it is possible that:
• some or all of its confidentiality agreements will not be honored;
• third parties will independently develop equivalent technology or misappropriate the Company’s technology or
designs;
• disputes will arise with the Company’s strategic partners, customers or others concerning the ownership of
intellectual property;
• unauthorized disclosure or use of the Company’s intellectual property, including source code, know-how or
trade secrets will occur; or
• contractual provisions may not be enforceable.
There can be no assurance that the Company will be successful in protecting its intellectual property rights.
The Company may not be successful in supplementing or managing its BlackBerry World applications catalogue.
BlackBerry World, the Company’s comprehensive electronic content distribution platform, is available to customers in over 170
markets globally. The Company's offering of applications and other content on BlackBerry World requires a substantial
investment for the development of the necessary infrastructure, improvement of developer and consumer interfaces and
advertising costs. In fiscal 2015, the Company announced the availability of the Amazon Appstore with the BlackBerry 10.3
operating system, greatly expanding access to thousands of the most popular applications and games to BlackBerry customers.
This has enabled the Company to align its developer program with a renewed focus on delivering the most secure, end-to-end
mobile enterprise solutions by placing more emphasis on the development of vital enterprise and productivity applications.
Decisions by customers to purchase the Company’s products are strongly influenced by the availability of top-rated third-party
software applications. The Company is dependent on third-party software developers to provide access to and develop content,
including applications, and services to enhance the user experience and maintain competitiveness and differentiation of
BlackBerry products in the marketplace. The availability and development of these applications and services will depend, in
part, on perceptions of the third-party software developers of the relative benefits of developing software for the Company’s
products rather than or in addition to those of its competitors, which may be adversely affected by further losses of market share
and perceptions regarding the ability of the Company's products and services to compete successfully in the wireless
communications industry. The Company may not be successful in convincing existing BlackBerry developers to develop
additional applications or new developers to develop applications for the catalogue. Some developers who have significant
relationships with the Company’s competitors may be unwilling to develop applications for BlackBerry products without
valuable incentives from the Company, or at all. In addition, if the Company develops its own software applications and
services, such development may negatively affect the decisions of third-party developers to develop, maintain, and upgrade
similar or competitive applications. The loss of, or inability to maintain these relationships may affect the desirability of the
Company’s products and, hence, the Company’s revenue from the sale of its products, particularly to consumers. If the
Company is unable to successfully expand and manage the BlackBerry World applications catalogue, the success of the
Company’s BlackBerry 10 smartphones and future products and services may be materially and adversely affected.
An expansion of the Company’s online commercial presence may also require significant additional investment in security
measures to protect the transmission of confidential data, including payment information, and to augment protection for the
Company’s servers and network. Any failure by the Company to implement adequate measures around security of payments, or
security of confidential or personal information of the end users of the Company’s products, could result in regulatory
enforcement or potential litigation and have a detrimental impact on the BlackBerry brand and the Company’s reputation. For
example, failure by the Company to comply with applicable laws, regulations and practices imposed or supported by the
payment card industry relating to the security of payments could result in sanctions by individual card providers (including
prohibiting the Company from processing a card provider’s card), regulatory sanctions, fines or litigation under applicable
privacy laws or reputational damage. Applications may also require an interface with third parties over which the Company has
no control. If necessary third-party interfaces are not available to support the applications, the Company may lose market share,
and its business, results of operations and financial condition may be adversely affected.
The Company’s business relies on its strategic alliances and relationships with third-party network infrastructure
developers.
The Company relies on wireless network infrastructure developers for access to emerging wireless data protocols. In addition,
the Company’s business is dependent on the development, deployment and maintenance by third parties of their wireless
infrastructure and on their sales of products and services that use the Company’s products. The loss of, or inability to maintain,