[leejayh]

Ok, so another hair brained idea, that I want to pass by people on the forum.

What about Blackberry creating a strategic partnership with Intel and switching all next Gen Blackberries to be Intel mobile chip based.

Hear me out.

We all know that Hardware specs is kind of a BS "mines bigger than yours " game. The fact is, our BlackBerry z10's run pretty darn smooth and fast, especially with actual bb10 apps.

The problem is, the z10 is really a Samsung s3 on the inside. And people can easily compare the various snapdragon processors.

So, since BlackBerry is its own operating system, and the kernel is Qnx, why not do a deal with Intel and give them exclusivity for some preference and Marketing support.

Intel needs to get into the pile market in a big way, and those chintzy Chinese phone manufacturers don't count.

It would become a platform for Intel and BlackBerry to differentiate between Snapdragon Android devices, and apple and their chips.

Why not?

Posted via CB10

[diegonei]

Why Interl though? It's not like they offer anything better than any of the others (one could argue they are actually behind even).

All BB10 devices have powerful SnapDragon GPUs. Why not nVidia? I am not sure I follow, but I agree they could use a powerful hardware partner.

[propeller10]

This is a possibility.
Smartphones with Intel Inside�

But the question is, will Intel even consider a partnership with blackberry?

[Troy Tiscareno]

The fact is that Intel is NOT in a leadership position in smartphone SoCs. Yes, they are working furiously to catch up, but they definitely aren't there yet. Qualcomm is arguably the leader, and BB is already using them, so going with Intel would be going backwards, from a pure hardware perspective. The only way a deal would make sense is if Intel was fronting a bunch of advertising dollars.

But also keep in mind that BB doesn't even have a manufacturing partner anymore, and has no phones officially on the roadmap for the future. IF, and to me it's a HUGE "if", they make another phone, it is going to be a very low-volume production item, focused on enterprise sales. That's nothing to get Intel all excited about.

But going back to "differentiating", if you're trying to sell phones based on specs, a single spec isn't going to work; you'd need nearly every spec on the phone to be cutting edge. Plus, frankly, most people who buy a phone for the specs want Android, because they want to be able to push that hardware and have the apps and ecosystem (and access) to do so. If BB had comparable specs to a top Android phone, it wouldn't really be a sales point FOR BB, just one less thing AGAINST BB. The single biggest negative that is impacting BB sales is the ecosystem, and for the average person, running Android apps on BB isn't the solution, plus, there's still many other big gaps in the ecosystem:

• No tablets or other non-phone devices
• Minimal other accessories and support
• Minimal media (movies, TV shows, books, magazines) available in BB World
• No first-party cloud services

I don't disagree that fixing the hardware issue shouldn't be done, but BB's biggest obstacle to getting consumer sales, besides its reputation, is a lack of native apps, complimentary devices, and cloud services (i.e., the ecosystem). And without those, it can't FIX its reputation. If those WERE fixed, people could deal with the middle-of-the-road hardware, and without them, even the best hardware would do little for anyone but existing BB customers.