Silent Circle

Silent Circle is a specialist provider of multi-platform secure communications for businesses and individuals. The company creates apps and mobile devices that deliver privacy without compromise. In the beginning, the company developed apps exclusively, but later launched the Blackphone, a smartphone designed in-house that uses a modified version of Android to encrypt user data and communications. Android played a pivotal role as Silent Circle extended its portfolio. “We saw that Android was an open-source platform committed to security research, and provided much of what we were looking for,” says David Purón, Vice President of Engineering. “It offered us a wealth of functionality as well as the flexibility to preload apps we wanted and to tweak the look and feel of our OS.” This gave Silent Circle a head start and slashed development times – the company launched the first version of Blackphone after just six months. By contrast, says David, working from nothing would have taken years. Several versions of the Blackphone later, Silent Circle has doubled its sales, expanded its client base and launched worldwide. David is enthusiastic about the part played by Google and Android in the company’s growth. “It wouldn’t be possible to compete in the market if you had to start from scratch,” he explains. “It’s great that Android gives you the flexibility to create innovative products outside the Google ecosystem.”

Android offered us a wealth of functionality as well as the flexibility to preload apps we wanted and to tweak the look and feel of our OS.

David Purón, Vice President of Engineering, Blackphone