Blackberry’s plan to win back users in India has nothing to do with its devices

Indians were big BlackBerry fans until just a few years ago. But once smartphones took off, they quickly turned to cheap and cheerful smartphones running Google’s Android operating system.

Instead of trying to win them back to its handsets, BlackBerry is trying to win them back to its services. According to reports in Indian newspapers, the Canadian handset manufacturer will introduce a service that allows users to operate up to nine phone numbers from a single SIM card. Quartz has asked Blackberry for comment, and will update this post with any response.

This is an acknowledgement of a large and growing market worldwide: Just under half of Android users in India have dual-SIM devices.

According to the Hindustan Times, BlackBerry’s new SIM, offered in conjunction with Idea Cellular, a mobile operator, will allow users to separate their work and personal lives, using a different number and billing plan for each while using the same physical device. The system has the benefit of working on all phones, rather than just dual-SIM devices. And it allows people to segregate different parts of their lives.