[dandbj13]

http://crackberry.com/blackberry-10-...ts-vs-platform

Just days ago, the standing excuse for the delay was waiting for magical, 4G chips. It was scandalous to suggest that the software was the problem, especially a core integration issue. Today, hardware is not the issue. It is software, in particular, core integration issues. But that excuse was not good enough.

The wrath of the fans came down hard, as did the stock price. It took a few days, but RIM finally did what I have been saying they had to do, namely, respond. Their response was to move the goalposts yet again. Before the cement had a chance to set on this excuse, they uprooted it, and moved it way downfield.

Now, it is neither about some hardware component nor software integration; it is about an all encompassing platform. This changes the conversation completely. This is not about any particular product; it is about laying the groundwork for a whole new platform. Why are you asking when your house will be finished when we are building a space ship that will go to the stars to colonize a new planet and create a new civilization. What is your house compared to that?

Anyway, that's how it came across to me. Thoughts?

...And cheers.

[MisterMe11]

they've been speaking of a platform for the next 10 years for quite some time, now. They've also referred to 'mobile computing platform' well before the delay announcement.

That said, they need to compete with ecosystems that are rapidly becoming better integrated, so the challenge is intensifying....

[dandbj13]

they've been speaking of a platform for the next 10 years for quite some time, now.

DailyTech - RIM Claims It Can't Find an LTE Chipset, Delays BB10 Half a Year

I could have sworn they were citing LTE chipsets as the big reason for the delay. My bad.

[amazinglygraceless]

If only we had listened to THIS guy back on 16 December 2011

Nomura analyst Stuart Jeffrey in a research note to investors concurred that this could be the end for RIM or at least was a huge hit. He writes, "We see a high risk that this is too late to turn around RIM's position and believe the risk of further delays is meaningful. Even in the best case, however, it seems unlikely RIM will have large volumes of its BB10 devices on sale within 15 months."

[MisterMe11]

I wasn't being clear enough. I didn't mean that they have been consistently using 'platform development complexity' as a reason for delays; I meant that the concept of a 10 year platform has simply been part of their messaging for a while. I thought that you were implying that they cooked up the platform concept ahead of the quarterly announcement to help explain the delay.

As to the chipset 'delay', I think that was used as an excuse when they decided that releasing Playbook OS on a Colt (now dev Alpha) wasn't going to be good enough - At that time they were likely beginning to design updated hardware around the new Qualcomm S4 which wasn't in full production at that point (speculation on my part but seems supported by the facts AFAIK)

DailyTech - RIM Claims It Can't Find an LTE Chipset, Delays BB10 Half a Year

I could have sworn they were citing LTE chipsets as the big reason for the delay. My bad.

[southlander]

You can analyze it to death and come up with a myriad of analogies. It all comes back to the same thing. For the consumer smartphone market, RIM is too slow to plan and execute.

Sent from my flip-phone.

[jthep]

Remember the Playbook time frame? First quarter of 2011. We got it the second quarter of 2011 and the iPad2 came out just before it!

I am just hoping now RIM sticks to quarter 1 of 2013 and not push it back any further. Also I have to imagine still no Netflix, Skype, etc. which even it is despite all odds the best mobile OS the world has ever seen, it will get butchered, nitpicked, and belittled for lacking certain apps at launch. Also those in the business world that are issued Blackberries due to its superior keyboards and emails on the fly will knock it for not having a qwerty device at launch.

RIM really needs an Apple-esque marketing campaign and possibly even a unique gimmick. The last few Apple iPhones has things added like front facing cameras, Facetime, Siri, etc. Its true hardly anyone uses them or sites it as a real reason to buy one phone over another, but at launch made people line up in droves for the new devices.

OK, so RIM fans and perhaps fans of other platforms are not the same as the Apple crowd that lines up for days to buy the same devices every year with minor improvements, but they do need at least some really positive buzz in BB10.

[Moonbase0ne]

Whatever their reasons are for a delay, you would think that thye would have a better ideal when their new OS would be finished, instead of delaying it 3 times, especially considering the situation they are in.

And if it is near complete, an they just want everything to be "perfect" before they release itit might be too late before it is anywhere near "perfect", in their eyes.

[Moonbase0ne]

Remember the Playbook time frame? First quarter of 2011. We got it the second quarter of 2011 and the iPad2 came out just before it!

I am just hoping now RIM sticks to quarter 1 of 2013 and not push it back any further. Also I have to imagine still no Netflix, Skype, etc. which even it is despite all odds the best mobile OS the world has ever seen, it will get butchered, nitpicked, and belittled for lacking certain apps at launch. Also those in the business world that are issued Blackberries due to its superior keyboards and emails on the fly will knock it for not having a qwerty device at launch.

RIM really needs an Apple-esque marketing campaign and possibly even a unique gimmick. The last few Apple iPhones has things added like front facing cameras, Facetime, Siri, etc. Its true hardly anyone uses them or sites it as a real reason to buy one phone over another, but at launch made people line up in droves for the new devices.

OK, so RIM fans and perhaps fans of other platforms are not the same as the Apple crowd that lines up for days to buy the same devices every year with minor improvements, but they do need at least some really positive buzz in BB10.

Exactly. The Be Bold and Get Things Done slogans don't really seem to be working for them. Aside form that, how many ads for a BB have you seen as opposed to just about any other OS?

[dandbj13]

I wasn't being clear enough. I didn't mean that they have been consistently using 'platform development complexity' as a reason for delays; I meant that the concept of a 10 year platform has simply been part of their messaging for a while.

Right. And I was clearly, not being clear enough. They may have had a platform change as a part of their talking points for a while, but they have been purposely presenting the platform as being on track and not the problem. They wanted us to believe that the issues were small, third-party issues rather than fundamental, platform issues.

Having said that. This is the excuse they should have started with: the truth. This is the one that buys them the most time. Blaming it on hardware makes everyone else seem to be a genius as they can put out great hardware while you have to wait. That won't do. Blaming it on software makes you seem incompetent. Blaming it on a grand vision means that you have a grand vision, and everyone knows that grand visions take time to come to life. It buys time and good will. It's brilliant. BS, but brilliant. I like it from a marketing perspective.

[Thunderbuck]

Right. And I was clearly, not being clear enough. They may have had a platform change as a part of their talking points for a while, but they have been purposely presenting the platform as being on track and not the problem. They wanted us to believe that the issues were small, third-party issues rather than fundamental, platform issues.

Having said that. This is the excuse they should have started with: the truth. This is the one that buys them the most time. Blaming it on hardware makes everyone else seem to be a genius as they can put out great hardware while you have to wait. That won't do. Blaming it on software makes you seem incompetent. Blaming it on a grand vision means that you have a grand vision, and everyone knows that grand visions take time to come to life. It buys time and good will. It's brilliant. BS, but brilliant. I like it from a marketing perspective.

No, there's downsides to it. It suggests your original targets were so wildly out of line that nobody should ever trust your company again.

The truth is, RIM could have had a handset out earlier this year. I'm pretty sure we all know that the BB10 dev alpha device was at least the preproduction run for the intended handset, and that late last year, for whatever reason, they decided to hit the reset button, design around new hardware, and significantly update the platform at the same time.

And they gave themselves a year to do it. Probably seemed fair at the time, and the target was probably arrived at with at least some attention paid to what milestones they'd already achieved and how long they'd taken to that point.

It's a 1-quarter pushback. I think they DO have something good, and they needed a couple more months to make sure it would be "market-ready". Feel free to come back to this thread and ridicule me mercilessly if I prove wrong.

ONE OTHER, MORE FANCIFUL POSSIBILITY: they found a strategic partner and need time to integrate BB10 with the partner's products...

[Canuck671]

The new bb makes toast.

[dandbj13]

Here is more on the platform concept.

Notice how, with one word: platform, phones, software, features, keyboards, LTE, battery life, release dates, and everything else, has been demoted to mere pedestrian concerns. RIM's message seems to be, "If we execute well over the next ten months, we will remain solvent for the next ten years. What is your silly little issue compared to that.

Another aspect to the platform message is that we are putting in all the things you can't see before giving you something tangible. I don't know if this is a great strategy. It is like preparing land for a subdivision and hoping people will buy houses that do not exist in your utopia colony. You simply don't talk about the stuff people can't see.

You build that in silence. By the time you talk to consumers, you had better have something to sell. Apple sold and iPod and $.99 songs and built an empire that is growing faster today, than is was when it started. They sold an iPhone before a developer ever heard of it. iOS was not the platform; iTunes was the platform. Apple built it from there.

I'm not sure what RIM is seeing as their platform. What is their iPod? Is it the first, keyboardless, OS10 device? Is their iTunes some sort of NFC network? What is this parking meter, auto, credit card, embedded life platform? None of this matters without a device that captures the imagination, and makes people collectively turn their head, look at what you've got on offer, and line up to buy it. So far, they haven't shown us anything like that. Predictive text? A gestural, card-based interface? Crickets.

This is not the stuff of platforms. This is not the stuff of company saving, category reinventing, ten-year cycle making stuff. This is just product iteration. Worse yet, it is iterating someone else's product. Right now, what they are showing of BB10 looks more like WP7 or Android than a recognizable BB product.

When it comes right down to it, I only have one real problem with the platform, agenda. It is too grand. It tries to do too much. All that was required, IMO was for RIM to put out a credible product by the end of the summer for people to get excited about. The HW just needed to live up to high-end, Android phone quality. It just needed to have LTE and NFC: the two radios they are building their next-gen platform on. They could have given us one or two new features using NFC, and given us a hint of their vision for where they are going with it. It is going to take a while before anyone fully cracks that nut, including Apple. RIM isn't going to do it by Q1.

That would have been enough too keep the fans excited and sales high. Perfection would not have been expected. They could still have pushed the concept of platform building, but more credibly, while selling the products around which it were built. As it stands, they are just selling utopian villages with only a lot of broken ground to show for it. All we have is a person vaguely describing the blueprint. At this stage, a platform needs more than that. We don't have completed HW, SW, or infrastructure. Yet we are being asked to wait till the whole platform is complete. Something about that makes my Spidey senses tingle.

[john_v]

The new bb makes toast.

Well if it won't or can't make my morning coffee then I want no part of it!

[Superfly_FR]

http://crackberry.com/blackberry-10-...ts-vs-platform

Just days ago, the standing excuse for the delay was waiting for magical, 4G chips. It was scandalous to suggest that the software was the problem, especially a core integration issue. Today, hardware is not the issue. It is software, in particular, core integration issues. But that excuse was not good enough.

The wrath of the fans came down hard, as did the stock price. It took a few days, but RIM finally did what I have been saying they had to do, namely, respond. Their response was to move the goalposts yet again. Before the cement had a chance to set on this excuse, they uprooted it, and moved it way downfield.

Now, it is neither about some hardware component nor software integration; it is about an all encompassing platform. This changes the conversation completely. This is not about any particular product; it is about laying the groundwork for a whole new platform. Why are you asking when your house will be finished when we are building a space ship that will go to the stars to colonize a new planet and create a new civilization. What is your house compared to that?

Anyway, that's how it came across to me. Thoughts?

...And cheers.

Well, I believe I wasn't living under the same rock as many (hope it's not an offensive expression). It's been almost a year since we discussed in the forum about " what QNX brings to RIM". We talked about technical specs a lot (micro-kernel against monolithic, "true" multitasking, reliability et blah et blah) often far away of our real comprehension of every single points we were arguing ("we" = me included).

But some of us tried, in the general indifference, to wonder how the already running QNX systems will manage to connect with Berries. At the time, I believe I kinda flooded with that and even got some friendly PMs titled "stop dreaming", stating it's challenging enough to run BBX (its name @ this time) and what I wrote about was sci-fi.

I also believe this is what was hidden behind the "much much more" expression we've heard in the mouth of Heins and Saunders, quite a numerous time since we know what BB10 is. To my understanding, RIM wanted to keep this hidden (as they never clearly promoted it) until BB10 launch for "momentum" and spectacular demos.

Now, the scenario is slightly different. RIM must answer to whys and prove they're not in the vaporware section. Be ready for some upcoming amazing demos ... IMveryHO.

[dandbj13]

RIM must answer to whys and prove they're not in the vaporware section. Be ready for some upcoming amazing demos ... IMveryHO.

RIM US head: BlackBerry 10 is 'an entirely new way of interacting with the world around us' | The Verge

Do you see what I mean about the platform rhetoric being too grand, and trying to explain too much? You are right. At this point, they had better have one of a demo. In fact, nothing less than mind-blowing, paradigm shifting products and services will do. This is the first half of the over-promise, under-deliver two-step that RIM has pretty much perfected. No company should be talking this much about how they are going to change the way you interact with the world this far away from a product launch.

[cgk]

This isn't about real products or services, it's about constructing a narrative - it's clear from the stock price and the lack of movement on possible takeovers that the RIM management know that as a way to sell the company or create value for shareholders, BB10 as a mobile OS has not convinced analysts or competitors that it will make a difference. This is an attempt to create some element of potential in order to encourage interest in buying the company.