NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Friday, September 12, 2014

BlackBerry today announced it has acquired Movirtu, a UK startup that allows multiple numbers to be active on a single device. The Canadian company’s hope is to boost its device management offerings in bring-your-own device (BYOD) and corporate owned personally enabled (COPE) environments. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Movirtu’s Virtual SIM platform allows separate billing for voice, data and messaging on each number being used on a device. Employees can thus switch between business and personal profiles without carrying multiple devices or SIM cards, allowing for separate charges to be billed to the company and the employee. They can also switch between profiles for calls, data and messages, even when they are on their home network or roaming.