BlackBerry acquires UK start-up Movirtu

Movirtu technology enables employees to use two numbers on one phone and receive separate bills

Canadian smartphone manufacturer BlackBerry has acquired Movirtu, a UK start-up that allows multiple SIM cards to be active on a single device.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

The firm is hoping to build some momentum for its various BlackBerry 10 devices and for its BlackBerry Enterprise Service platform, hoping that consumers that are part of their employer's bring-your-own-device (BYOD) or choose-your-own-device (CYOD) schemes will want to use one phone for both business and personal use, but have two different numbers and two different bills.

Movirtu's virtual SIM platform enables separate billing for voice, data and messaging on each SIM card that is hooked up to the device - something that is already available on rival Samsung Knox 2.0. The technology allows employees to switch from their business number to their personal number and vice versa.

Carsten Brinkschulte, CEO of Movirtu, claims that the technology is unique and is based on a number of patents.

He said that BlackBerry would help to bring the solution to market through its wide network of mobile operators, and BlackBerry maintains that it will support the deployment of the technology by mobile operators on other smartphone operating systems - most likely to be iOS and Android - in addition to BlackBerry OS.

BlackBerry CEO John Chen 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."