The first was in '08/'09 - shortly after the iPhone. Some companies (Google, Samsung) saw where the industry was going, made the appropriate decisions and are now profiting handsomely. In hindsight, that was the right time for RIM to acquire QNX and start on BB10, which might have done very well had it come out in 2011. With decent hardware, a solid OS, their own style and riding on BBM (big at that time), they might have staked a sustainable 10-15% chunk of the market.
The second chance was '10/'11, around the time of Nokia's Burning Platform Memo. This is when RIM started on BB10, but as we see now, it was already too late. Had they bet heavily on Android and on their strengths (security, gov & enterprise sales), they might be doing pretty-well today.
I hope the Waterloo area survives this well.
Few companies, with the market share RIM had, see threats as 'near term'. Fewer still have a deep appreciation for the entirety of the technology stack and the time it takes to move things. This is especially true of young executives but can happen to anyone.
RIM's technology stack matured over many years, from idea to business juggernaut. What that tells you is that moving the stack is also going to take years, so if you're experienced you start looking 5 - 6 years out not 1 - 2 years out.
When the iPhone hit, and Google was close behind, that was a huge signal. But Ballmer and Microsoft dismissing it, was a huge counter-signal. If you're an enterprise IT company, and the biggest company in Enterprise IT in the market place is dismissing the iPhone as a 'fad', you might be inclined to believe them rather than your own people who are saying "this is a threat".
At some point you get behind the power curve. In airplanes once you are behind the curve there is literally nothing you can do which will prevent you from eventually crashing. The same it true in companies. RIM apparently decided early on that Microsoft was a more credible indicator of the future than Apple/Google for their marketplace. And they have paid the ultimate price for that.
I know it's become fun to pretend like Ballmer dismissed the iPhone but I have a hard time watching that video and seeing anything like that.
RIM got caught out by a change to corporate culture - bring your own device - largely driven by economic decisions in response to the recession combined with a restructuring of the mobile market and a generation of hardware that leapfrogged RIM's product line in terms of status appeal.
What happened is Apple changed the market and Ballmer's dissing of a competitor did not mean that Microsoft scaled back its research efforts or gave up its cultural bias toward long term plays.
I'm going to say the physics of aerodynamics is not a good analogy for business competition.
The second reason was them not standing behind their hardware. The warranty was a year. The bluetooth module failed after one year and 3 months, and it turns out this happened to a large number of people with that model. Tough luck.
There is so much choice these days, that narrowing down is done by using any reason. That is why I wouldn't touch another BB and as a recommender to my friends they don't either. This kind of thing can be fixed, but it requires a long track record of redemption. (HTC is also on the do not touch list due to a lack of sustained redemption.)
Plus, global roaming. It's kinda sad nobody ever thinks about it…
BlackBerry was able to provide worldwide flatrate roaming (well, they could, but it was up to each carrier to sell it as a product or bill each user to death).
Now, BB10 loses that capability. In fact, BB10 is completely and absolutely dumb when it comes to be an enterprise phone: multiple massive inboxes with different providers/technologies, many contacts, busy agenda, roaming and travel planning.
BlackBerry could have been today the perfect companion for people who really mean business. Or, at least, a very powerful one (people sometimes don't mind carrying two phones). But with an utterly expensive, beta-grade[1] device that does none of these things, I can't find a single reason why someone wouldn't pick an Android or an iPhone. Even for business.
Yeah, while pretty much everyone witnessed and understands the failure of RIM to respond to the iPhone and hardware/OS missteps it might not be so well known that they were failing to properly service their existing strengths at the same time.
In my experience, lots of Enterprise/Government folks really didn't and likely still don't care about touchscreens and apps (for their employees), just email/PIN.
Problem was, the sometimes painful software/support plus lengthy, too frequent SRP outages ensured that BES and the Blackberries connected to them would be abandoned at the first opportunity.
All they have to do is make the best damn Android devices.
Considering they have money, they can do it.
Other than that, nothing short of miraculous futuretech invention-acquisition will save them.
The "best" devices will never sell without marketing. And if RIM does move to Android, that signals that they gave up and tried to stave off their decline/death by exploiting the Android market. Not to mention that with the competition, RIM has even less of a chance.
I recommend thinking of a unique comment/argument that doesn't repeat what is already said. If you cannot think of one, then please don't post a useless comment that turns this into a Reddit thread.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".
EDIT: Thanks for the link to the excellent Breaking Bad video. For what it's worth, I haven't seen an episode since season 3 so didn't realize the coincidence. My pop culture connection would have been to Watchmen.
WHEN I was a King and a Mason - a Master proven and skilled
I cleared me ground for a Palace such as a King should build.
I decreed and dug down to my levels. Presently under the silt
I came on the wreck of a Palace such as a King had built.
There was no worth in the fashion - there was no wit in the plan -
Hither and thither, aimless, the ruined footings ran -
Masonry, brute, mishandled, but carven on every stone:
"After me cometh a Builder. Tell him I too have known.
Swift to my use in the trenches, where my well-planned ground-works grew,
I tumbled his quoins and his ashlars, and cut and reset them anew.
Lime I milled of his marbles; burned it slacked it, and spread;
Taking and leaving at pleasure the gifts of the humble dead.
Yet I despised not nor gloried; yet, as we wrenched them apart,
I read in the razed foundations the heart of that builder’s heart.
As he had written and pleaded, so did I understand
The form of the dream he had followed in the face of the thing he had planned.
When I was a King and a Mason, in the open noon of my pride,
They sent me a Word from the Darkness. They whispered and called me aside.
They said - "The end is forbidden." They said - "Thy use is fulfilled.
"Thy Palace shall stand as that other’s - the spoil of a King who shall build."
I called my men from my trenches, my quarries my wharves and my sheers.
All I had wrought I abandoned to the faith of the faithless years.
Only I cut on the timber - only I carved on the stone:
"After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known."
This is absurd, considering what I imagine the content to be.
I never saw that show, and the poem seemed quite relevant to me.
The Q10's battery life is great, the hardware keyboard is solid and travels well. The Paratek antenna gets the best reception and data connection of any device I've ever used. The BB10 software isn't great, but it's decent. (It's certainly far better than where WebOS / iOS / Android was when they launched. Even today, BB10.2 is significantly better / more powerful than Windows Phone 8, even if the UI is less well defined).
Their story, to me, seems almost down to timing. They're executing pretty well right now, it's just two to three years too late.
It will be sad to watch all that hardware die. In a year or two, there probably won't be any devices available that have a large battery, solid hardware keyboard, and decent cellular data reception.
I've tried Android and iPhone and don't particularly want to return to either one. The former because of too many apps that want all the permissions under the sun while the OS offers a complete lack of fine-grained controls of them[1], and a subpar UI experience (subjective, I know). The latter due to lack of control without rooting it. My windows 8 desktop experience has spoiled that OS for me on a phone, fairly or otherwise.
But it begins to look like I will have no choice very soon. I hope they manage to pull out of this - they're still releasing a new flagship, and have other irons in the fire - but it's not looking good.
[1] as in 'yes, let the app get to GPS, but no do not let it get to my personal data or phone info'. Something BBOS legacy offered, and BB10 only slightly less - when you make an app you were expected to plan for the user to deny functionality and degrade nicely.
I'm also worried that this is the end. Every previous company thats built decent 'prosumer' or 'power-user' phones appears to be dead or dying.
I loved my Palm Pre (WebOS), it was my first smartphone. They're dead now.
I upgraded to an HTC Arrive (Windows Phone 7), but HTC's slowly dying off, and no one makes (or Microsoft blocks?) hardware keyboards for that platform now. Windows Phone also didn't support any notifications or push notifications at the time (and 'live tiles' aren't solid enough to replace them).
I upgraded to a Motorola Photon Q. Software's ok, and there's no terrible skin. But the battery life and reception are both terrible (and the battery is sealed in, so every day it gets worse...). I knew the sealed battery was a mistake, I tried it anyway and got burned. Won't be making that mistake again.
The Q10 was my last refuge. When BlackBerry goes away, I suspect there will be literally nothing left for me to turn to.
Of course, the chances are that no small number of apps you might be tempted to restrict will promptly crash since they'll assume that having asked for the permission up front means they'll get whatever data they want when they ask for it.
I can't wait for the Z30. That should bring more people to the fold.
3.7 million phone sales are nothing. Only if they had copied iOS the Samsung way in time.
It's an image problem, not a phone problem. They can't market like Apple used to. If they could, they would get more sales, but their marketing is just pitiful.
same idiocy as MS.
it's either user-centric or it isn't. BB catered to "business", but that meant IT. the users, managers, switched privately to iPhones. then demanded them from IT. boom, headshot.
BYOD is what kills "business-centric".
BB realized that, tried to position BBM as a user centric thing. too late. and schizo, as the playbook slogan "amateur hour is over" showed.
I use the same binary build that I submit with ease for Google and Amazon, but BlackBerry tends to deny our application every once in awhile. Just figuring out how to navigate the application web portal to figure out why it was denied is a challenge. Why is it so hard to wrap the "Denied" text with a direct link to the reason as to why it was denied? Instead I need to crawl the page to find the reason.
Another trouble that comes to mind more recently is that they added some sort of additional min-os requirement for a config/manifest file with a cryptic error message that needed resolving before the binary was allowed to be submitted.
I would have thought it would be far easier to get apps through BlackBerry since they want more apps for their devices. Instead, I personally find getting apps for BB discouraging. Windows in the same space even approached and offered to pay us to develop an app for their store.
I had a Blackberry Tour that I got in 2009 and had until 2011. By the time the contract was up a key was missing and the software was archaic compared to what was on the market. From that time forward I had no interest in ever going back.
I think the same thing could be largely said about Dell. They didn't care about quality until competitors came along and ate their lunch. Now they are trying to reinvent themselves and claim back lost market share which is just a very, very difficult thing to do.
I hope the OS survives even if the company doesn't.
How the mighty have fallen.
Around 2007 with the release of the iPhone, the smartphone market shifted massively. Within a relatively short time, people wanted phones with (relatively speaking, for the time) gigantic screens, no hardware keyboards, fluid touch-based UIs, and abundant third-party apps. Apple delivered on this, and Google followed fairly closely behind.
BB was caught flat-footed and took years to catch up on the UI and form factor, by which time they were too late to catch up on the apps, which is probably what ultimately killed them. BB's success was in a time where the phone maker and the carrier were expected to provide nearly all of the useful functionality on a phone, whereas with iPhone and Android, while they're still expected to be useful out of the box, it's also expected that the user will heavily customize them with third-party apps.
1] OS felt dated. Failure to come closer to what customers wanted on a timely basis.
2] Poor app developer experience.
3] A lot of different hardware specs against which to develop apps.
4] Not enough apps. Missing key apps.
5] Slow to innovate after settling on major patent case. The company became very lawyer focused which slowed innovation to a crawl.
I'm sure I'm missing tons of stuff and this would be a great case study, but as a former employee this is coming from my perspective.
I think BlackBerry considered their customers to be (a) the carriers and (b) IT departments. End users weren't considered their customers until it was too late.
It's classic innovators dilemma. BlackBerry could think of nothing but protecting their existing business, even with failure staring them in the face. They should have been planning more for the next phase of the company (whether that be selling enterprise servers or whatever else) and made a small, cheap, play at restoring their phone business (probably by forking Android).
- I'm confused. They were THE leading mobile platform. So they didn't decide to enter a crowded market. The market got super crowded and they didn't respond well. But I don't understand the "go it alone" unless you mean innovating too late to roll out a new OS that was touch driven vs BB keyboard.
The BB, Nokia, HTC etc problem is one of cash /runaway. Nokia was almost broke and how many $950M loss quarters can BB take? Not that many. Microsoft can keep bankrolling Windows Phones for a decade waiting for iPhone and Android to make mistakes and no one will even question them.
Look at what they've done for xBox and Bing.
So, i downloaded their doc. iirc, they had three ways to develop apps. one was using web technology, and you couldn't do much. then they had two different sets of java apis : an old, discontinued one, with which you seemed to be able to have things work, and a new one, soon to be released, and undocumented.
so i installed their sdk, on my mac, and tried to run a "hello world". but their sdk required windows, because the simulator didn't exist on mac. i had just bought and dual-boot installed a windows 7. but the sdk was just for xp, so i had to run an XP vm inside my windows. then i launched eclipse, to launch the simulator, to launch the Java program that was supposed to run my hello world.
i never was patient enough for that hello world to show.
then i said " well...let's get back to that once a customer ask for a blackberry development".
and guess what, that customer never came.
In 2010, I didn't even get this far.
Blackberry's slide starts around October 2011. News search is a little more flat, but that probably reflects the fact that tech journalists like to compare the rise of one thing to the fall of another. Google search reflects what people are looking for in general, so it covers people looking up information on the phone and OS, not just news.
Oddly, Blackberry is still in the lead on image and shopping search. It was tied with iOS on youtube until recently.
I'm not sure which way to go with it. Fortunately, you're free to tinker with the inputs. This is probably a more interesting graph: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=droid%2C%20lumia%2C%...
Make no mistake, the goal is to sell the company at this point. That is why BBM is suddenly the focus. They know that they aren't going to stay afloat with phone sales. They'll cut to the bone, and beef up one of their main commodities (BBM) until the sale happens.
There is always room for new devices, though. If FF or Ubuntu develop the repertoire with the developers first they have a fighting chance. There are pretty much no companies left that can sell just on their history and existing fan-base alone.
Can you elaborate? From what I've seen RIM made a pretty significant effort to court developers to its platform - the users and revenue just weren't there, so it was not that tempting for developers no matter what RIM said or did.
They included an entire Android 4.x runtime in their operating system, just so developers could take their existing Android apps and deploy them to BB10 with roughly 'one-click' worth of effort.
Short of re-writing every app on the face of the planet, I'm not sure how BlackBerry could have made it easier for developers to port or submit BB10 apps.
The new Z10 was not compatible with their large install base of Blackberry Enterprise Server. Anyone still running BES at the time the Z10 was introduced was likely to be a shop interested in security and control of the mobile platform their end users were using.
Which is why businesses like my employer and many others kept buying BB OS7 devices (did you notice they didnt break numbers out and actually mentioned BBOS7 as a significant portion during their investor call ?)
TL;DR: They thought all their enterprise customers would upgrade fast, they guessed wrong.
However, most companies are afraid to compete on fair battle background (Android). So instead of one, RIMM chose to fight 4 battles at the same time, hardware, software, ecosystem, marketing, and it lost on all of them. Now it is too late to change the fate. RIMM management was too afraid to change (really really afraid). It is said when I met RIMM people, and saw they couldn't do anything to save the sinking ship.
Bought an android right after.
Z10 hasn't been out that long, and already they're writing off stock? And Z10 is such an awesome phone, anyone who actually uses one loves it.
It could only be for one reason, to take the company private asap.
I expect announcement of a sale soon.
