[graham08]

The blackberry z10 phone is with out a doubt a better phone than the I phone. I just love when the carriers say they don't get returns on the iPhone that's because people really return right at the apple store. I've been three times this month with my cousin in Burlington to get her iPhone fixed it constantly freezes. It locks her out and won't let her in. I know have two z10 on my virgin account. My personal one I have had since January I have had not one problem with it and I load all the leaks on it. I went to virgin in Guelph to get the second one for my sister in law she loves it

Posted via CB10

[wjptam]

We don't know if Jim's plan would have worked.

Were carriers even interested in that stuff. It's not as if that plan would have saved BB's hardware business. The market forces driving people to iOS and Android would have been the same. Better / More Apps and media stores, choice of hardware that people wanted.

[Taylor Montgomery]

I don't disagree but I feel like mike was the man with the vision, he seen the big picture. Even if it was 6 years away
Edit, mike is not Steve Jobs, but I feel that like Steve, mike had a plan that he didn't get to follow through with. I hope he does get back so I can see his plan follow through...
I'm having trouble getting my thoughts on paper tonight....
Posted via CB10 on my Z10

[CrackedBarry]

I don't disagree but I feel like mike was the man with the vision, he seen the big picture. Even if it was 6 years away
Edit, mike is not Steve Jobs, but I feel that like Steve, mike had a plan that he didn't get to follow through with. I hope he does get back so I can see his plan follow through...
I'm having trouble getting my thoughts on paper tonight....
Posted via CB10 on my Z10

Really? Do tell, besides his initial idea to combine email with a gsm cellphone (a concept that other companies were also working on) what visions did Lazaridis have?

In what way did he see the big picture?

I'm genuinely baffled by your post, because its clear in the Globe and Mail article that Lazaridis completely misunderstood the market and where it was going, and on a fundamental level didn't understand that the cellphone was becoming a mini computer, rather than just an email device.

[chopachain]

TH and ML are the wrong guys for BB. Do some research. BB10 is the future. I would even go as far as saying my 9900 is more caparable to the latest offerings from apple. JB is Blackberrys Steve Jobs. BB10 is the future the problem is just trying to convince the world.

[unbreakablej]

Maybe Premium Watsa is just buying over the company so that he can put Jim B back....

Posted via CB10

[CrackedBarry]

The blackberry z10 phone is with out a doubt a better phone than the I phone.

That might be your opinion, but carriers seem to disagree. As do all the reviews I've read. The hundreds of millions of people who got an iPhone the last couple of years feel differently, as do all the companies that are either deploying iPhones, or replacing their old Blackberries with iPhones.

[richardat]

Balsilie definitely had the brains and business sense of those two.

I mean, just imagine if RIM had launched a cross platform BBM with multiple carriers aboard back in 2011 or early 2012! (Which it could... If the company had focused more on it)

They could have been a contender today, replacing Whatsapp, Skype, Dropbox and other companies/services on millions of phones. A licensing fee of just a dollar pr. device pr. Yar could have been a major revenue stream by now. Heck, Blackberry could probably also have gotten Samsung or other manufacturers on board. Indirectly, it would sell devices as well, through a halo effect, just like iPods sold MacBooks a few years ago...

Lazaridis on the other hand? He pretty much threw away every chance at keeping the company successful that he got...
The botched Storm device/launch... Not getting aboard Android right away... Keeping BBOS and not realizing that the company needed a new and modern OS... And of course taking too long to develop a next-gen phone and botching the execution.

Imagine if Blackberry had started developing a modern handset the day that the iPhone was presented... It took THREE years for Android to pick up steam, it wasnt until 2010 did it start to threaten Blackberry. If Blackberry could have either introduced a modern iPhone competitor, or gone aboard Android full steam from the get go, they could have had a position close to Samsung today. It could have been a hundred billion dollar company, with a little luck, and somebody else but Lazaridis behind the wheel.

The most telling place in the article, was the description of the board meeting where Lazaridis points to the touchscreen Z10 and says "I don't get this!"

Nope, Lazaridis didn't get it. Apparently there a lot of things that he "didn't get".

Heh, in my reply in the thread about the article, I almost mentioned that line too.....very apropos.

The worse my mood about BB, the older and crankier I imagine Mike when he belts that out! ;-)

[richardat]

Z
But I agree that the big problem was timing. MAYBE if they had been able to deliver on their initial timetable and released a Z10 back in the fall of 2011... it would have made a difference.
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Agreed. It was at the end of 2011 when they said BB10 wouldn't be out until later in 2012, when I felt the last real chance for bb10 was gone....after that, I felt success was now a long-shot - still a small chance if everything was done just right...but it was now a long-shot, even if they had gotten proper app support etc.

When I read this part of the article, everything that happened with BB10 suddenly clicked. It now makes perfect sense why it feels like such a disconnect and an incomplete product. It was completely segregated from the Blackberry DNA.

Yes...just like that employee letter suggested:

"I’m going to say what everyone is thinking… We need some heavy hitters at RIM when it comes to software management. Teams still aren’t talking together properly, no one is making or can make critical decisions, all the while everyone is working crazy hours and still far behind. We are demotivated. Just look at who our major competitors are: Apple, Google & Microsoft. These are three of the biggest and most talented software companies on the planet. Then take a look at our software leadership teams in terms of what they have delivered and their past experience prior to RIM… It says everything."

Also aghast that one person described them as "underestimating" the time and complexity to develop the new OS....REALLY?? What kind of ***** would do that?? How could anyone look at ios (or even android by then) and think...oh, not too bad...we can match/beat that?!! They should have looked at that, been scared out of their minds, and get on the most aggressive development plan imaginable. They should have looked at the standards ios was setting for quality, and realized that achieving that kind of mark would be incredibly difficult - maybe impossible within the timeframe - but better put EVERYTHING into trying. Realize that building a worthy competitor to ios and android would be incredibly difficult - then double that perceived difficulty!! Realize that even as you work, the proven developers at Apple and Google are still working every day to go farther yet. It was the ONLY phone project that mattered.

There shouldn't have been anyone begging for new hires or resources as mentioned in the article!! LEAST OF ALL the BB10 team! CEO's should have been saying, let's get the best, most organized software development initiative that has ever existed, and then, to the very limits of the company, the teams will get any resource, and as much of it, as they can possibly use until the point it is counterproductive!

The article gave the impression repeatedly of slow and uncertain decision making - lack of focus, and lack of urgency. Hopefully this was somewhat wrong, as it is so pathetic to think that RIM hadn't already learned by then, just how much trouble they were in, just how fierce and able their competitors were, and how harshly not-quite-there products would be treated. But the products speak for themselves - not so much that they had flaws, but the type of glaring hole-in-the-head flaws....ie. email client? Nah....maybe later...