The BlackPhone, a $600-plus encrypted Android handset designed to keep the prying eyes of criminals and the government out of mobile communications, is now fully owned by Silent Circle thanks to the company raking in investment cash.
Terms of the buyout deal with Spanish smartphone maker Geeksphone, the phone's hardware manufacturer, were not disclosed. Silent Circle said Thursday that it has raised $50 million and plans on showing off an encrypted "enterprise privacy ecosystem" at World Mobile Congress next week. A BlackPhone tablet is on the way, too.
"Silent Circle has brought tremendous disruption to the mobile industry and created an integrated suite of secure enterprise communication products that are challenging the status quo," Mike Janke, cofounder and chairman of the Silent Circle board, said in a statement. "This first stage of growth has enabled us to raise approximately $50M to accelerate our continued rapid expansion and fuel our second stage of growth."
The cash infusion and the push for encrypted communications are in part a direct result of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden's revelations about massive government surveillance.
'"I'm pleased to be part of the incredible growth of Silent Circle and to see our capabilities and opportunities rise alongside of the growing recognition of the importance of privacy in the modern enterprise," said Ross Perot Jr., an early investor in SPG Technologies, the name of the joint venture between Silent Circle and Geeskphone.
In our review last year, we described the BlackPhone—which runs a custom OS called PrivatOS—as "Android for the paranoid," saying:
We found that the BlackPhone lives up to its privacy hype. During our testing in a number of scenarios, there was little if any data leakage that would give any third-party observer anything usable in terms of private information.
As far as its functionality as a consumer device goes, BlackPhone still has a few rough edges.
The buyout announcement comes as the need for secure mobile communications was highlighted after the Snowden disclosure a week ago that governments may have breached the encryption on Gemalto's SIM cards.
The BlackPhone, however, wasn't without its own security issues, too.
A recently fixed vulnerability disclosed last month in the BlackPhone instant messaging application gave attackers the ability to decrypt messages, steal contacts, and control vital functions of the device.
Silent Circle made news in 2013 when it shuttered its secure e-mail service amid fears that the metadata of encrypted e-mail could be scooped up by the NSA.
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