BlackBerry faced secret plot to be taken over by Android OS

It has been revealed that BlackBerry came under an attempted $8bn takeover bid last summer from a Silicon Valley entrepreneur although the attempt quite evidently failed.

Entrepreneur and angel investor, Robin Chan, has revealed his attempt to launch a takeover bid for the company, which would have seen him lead a team of investors to run the company, according to cellular-news.com.

Chan spent three months last year pitching his takeover bid to potential investors, and also built up a team of developers who would move in to head up the R&D department.

Key to the bid was a plan to essentially scrap the BlackBerry hardware and OS, and focus the company on services, particularly its deep penetration into corporate email servers.

His plan would have seen the company ditch most of its work on the BB10 operating system, and instead release a modified version of an Android smartphone with BlackBerry 10 features and its email/BBM services.

In addition, they would have made the BlackBerry email services easier to deploy onto iPhone and other Android handsets.

The proposal obviously failed to gain traction, although he was able to raise commitments of $1bn towards the takeover bid.

BlackBerry has however, now put itself up for sale and is seeking a new route out of its current handset sales slump.