Blackberry (BBRY) said Monday it will leave the Pakistani market over a disagreement with the country’s government over access to its users information.
In a company blog post, BlackBerry COO Marty Beard wrote that the smartphone maker would remove its servers from the country after the Pakistani government asked to monitor customer communications.
If the company stayed in the country, it would be unable to protect its users’ privacy, according to Beard.
“BlackBerry provides the world’s most secure communications platform to government, military and enterprise customers,” he wrote in the post. “Protecting that security is paramount to our mission.”
“While we recognize the need to cooperate with lawful government investigative requests of criminal activity,” Beard added, “we have never permitted wholesale access to our BES servers.”
BlackBerry said it would halt operations in Pakistan by Dec. 30.
In June, Fortune reported on BlackBerry’s transition to a software company from a phone manufacturer historically.
