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Public relations firm Brodeur will no longer represent BlackBerry, an employee told TechnoBuffalo in an email recently. Brodeur has been BlackBerry’s go-to PR firm in the United States for more than 16 years and helped usher in the latest devices and tech, including the BlackBerry Z10 and BlackBerry’s new operating system.

Brodeur said work will be moved to another agency, although that outlet has not yet been named, and we still believe there’s a possibility much of the PR will be handled in house. BlackBerry also runs its own public relations department. It’s not immediately clear why the change was made.

TechnoBuffalo reached out to BlackBerry for an official comment but a spokesperson was not immediately available.

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So BlackBerry 10 is set to get an updated 4.2.2 Jelly Bean Android Runtime next month. Remarkably that will mean BLACKBERRY will be running the latest version of Android before over nearly 70% of the market. In the BBM Channel group I said 80% but the metrics are really a lot different. Android is so fragmented. 26% of Android is spread across Jelly Bean 4.1.x but under 3% have distributed Jelly Bean 4.2.x [as of May 1st]. What this means is that BlackBerry is working on something very impressive. To be one of the first OEMS not only to support the latest JB but have it as a runtime within another operating system.

Blah blah blah so why is this impressive? It shows BlackBerry is innovating in the software domain. A marked enhancement in tooling–allowing Android emulation, be it built in house, by an outside entity or by close partnership with Google, is happening in a big way as has been happening since the BlackBerry tablet the PlayBook. Making a jump from Gingerbread the 2.3.3 to 4.2.2 on the BB10 platform. And rumors of an outside company porting over the entire Android catalog into BlackBerry World, not only will destroy market perception but has the very real ability to decimate the app gap between BlackBerry and competing platforms. Tooling. Multiple SoftwareDevelopmentKits running seamlessly on a RealTimeOS not a GeneralPurposeOS. 4 SDKS vs the competitions 1.

Android running on Linux has around 13 million lines of code. BlackBerry’s QNX based BlackBerry 10 *which can run Android in emulation* has around 100,000 lines of code. Built on a true, nonbastardized microkernel architecture.

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