[the1]

yes, BB10 at launch was better than Android or iOS at launch. but that is a red herring. When you launch a product it will be compared to products from the current market, not the past one. So they compared launch BB10 with 2013 iOS/Android.

Although it's a bad comparisson, it like someone releasing a bad car today and saying it's good just because it's better than the first Audi/BMW/Mercedes.

Yes, it was a bad comparison..lol. But all jokes aside, truth is, people just have unrealistic expectations, point blank. People wanted BB10 to be perfect, but those people that want that have no clue what goes into building an OS from the ground up, especially when you have to play catch up. How can someone compare a new OS to one that has been around for 5-6 years, and on top of that, really only got good the year prior? But at the end of the day, it is what it is. Blackberry waved the white flag, I've never like iOS, and I left Android after using it longer than most (release day G1), so I'm sticking with Windows seeing that they are still committed to the OS.

[Soulstream]

Yes, it was a bad comparison..lol. But all jokes aside, truth is, people just have unrealistic expectations, point blank. People wanted BB10 to be perfect, but those people that want that have no clue what goes into building an OS from the ground up, especially when you have to play catch up. How can someone compare a new OS to one that has been around for 5-6 years, and on top of that, really only got good the year prior? But at the end of the day, it is what it is. Blackberry waved the white flag, I've never like iOS, and I left Android after using it longer than most (release day G1), so I'm sticking with Windows seeing that they are still committed to the OS.

They compare them because that's what you do when you want to buy a product. you compare products on the current market. So people compared 2013 BB10 to 2013 Android/iOS. both iOS and Android had agreat base OS from launch and they evolved from that good base with the help of 3rd party developers.

BB10 was a great foundation, but the competing OSs had already finished building the whole castle. And even today, due to lack of 3rd party support, BB10 is still at the foundation stage.

[the1]

They compare them because that's what you do when you want to buy a product. you compare products on the current market. So people compared 2013 BB10 to 2013 Android/iOS. both iOS and Android had agreat base OS from launch and they evolved from that good base with the help of 3rd party developers.

BB10 was a great foundation, but the competing OSs had already finished building the whole castle. And even today, due to lack of 3rd party support, BB10 is still at the foundation stage.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I understand that; only difference is, the big 2 were given a change to mature while other OS's must have the "win now" mentality. At the end of the day, it is what it is.

As to your second point, that falls on the developers and them willing to take a risk. It's a 2 edge sword of, they only make apps for marketshare, but marketshare is what gains apps, hence the reason I avoid any "mainstream" app that isn't cross platform because I feel that it gives the developers the "power" to determine what OS is deemed relevant, and that's nothing no person creating app(s) should, but people give it to them, but that's another rant for another day.

[Soulstream]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I understand that; only difference is, the big 2 were given a change to mature while other OS's must have the "win now" mentality. At the end of the day, it is what it is.

As to your second point, that falls on the developers and them willing to take a risk. It's a 2 edge sword of, they only make apps for marketshare, but marketshare is what gains apps, hence the reason I avoid any app that isn't cross platform (that isn't already natively installed) because I feel that it gives the developers the "power" to determine what OS is deemed relevant, and that's nothing no person creating app(s) should, but people give it to them, but that's another rant for another day.

I am a dev myself, and the truth is we don't want/need more than 3 ecosystems. More than that would lead to a lot of app and feature fragmentation. That's why the 3rd spot was so important and Windows phone secured that. When developing for iOS and Android already covers 95% of the market and then developing for WP also covers 99%, the remaining 1% is deemed insignificant. And what makes BB10 so special? Why not also develop for Sailfish, jolla, ubuntu,firefox and other under 0.1% OSs out there? You can't build for every platform out there and priorities must be created.

iOS and Android had time because they launched when the smartphone market was just starting to grow and they snowballed from there. BB10 launched when the market was already mature.

The smatphone market follows the same trend as the desktop market with one OS having a very large market-share (Android on mobile and Windows on Desktop) one OS only for premium (Apple for both) and the rest fighting for relevancy (100 linux distributons on desktop and a few OSs on mobile). This paradigm hasn't changed in the desktop world for decades now and the mobile world will follow suite.

[the1]

I am a dev myself, and the truth is we don't want/need more than 3 ecosystems. More than that would lead to a lot of app and feature fragmentation. That's why the 3rd spot was so important and Windows phone secured that. When developing for iOS and Android already covers 95% of the market and then developing for WP also covers 99%, the remaining 1% is deemed insignificant. And what makes BB10 so special? Why not also develop for Sailfish, jolla, ubuntu,firefox and other under 0.1% OSs out there? You can't build for every platform out there and priorities must be created.

iOS and Android had time because they launched when the smartphone market was just starting to grow and they snowballed from there. BB10 launched when the market was already mature.

The smatphone market follows the same trend as the desktop market with one OS having a very large market-share (Android on mobile and Windows on Desktop) one OS only for premium (Apple for both) and the rest fighting for relevancy (100 linux distributons on desktop and a few OSs on mobile). This paradigm hasn't changed in the desktop world for decades now and the mobile world will follow suite.

And I'm not saying BB10 is important. Crap, the moment I saw they were really going with Android, I took the sim out of my Z10 and put in back in my L1520. What I'm saying is, if you operation reaches a certain point, your app shouldn't be good on one platform and horrible on another. I can understand just jumping in but I don't know that much about that side of the game. Truthfully, I wish native mainstream apps were available for Sailfish, Ubuntu, etc. On top of that, I just want the duopoly destroyed but that's another ran. lol.

But I do have to say that I'm part of the minority who uses their phone as purely a form of communication. Outside of phone calls, text, email, Skype for Business, occasional web browsing, and a picture here and there, my phone is idle.

As far as market maturity, it was already there. We had Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Palm leading the way. The iPhone caused a huge disruption that turned the market into what it is today but we can't say that the market wasn't mature at the time.

As far as the desktop market, it is really dependent on what you are doing. For a while (even still today), those who chose to stay on Windows instead of going to Mac for music production were thrown scrap. I can't tell you the amount of times where a person deemed Windows to suck for music production because the program used was a crappy port not optimized for the OS. The work was not put into the Windows version like it was for OSX. Desktop is more use case than anything now. And lets not get started on Linux in the enterprise server space..

[Troy Tiscareno]

As far as market maturity, it was already there. We had Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Palm leading the way. The iPhone caused a huge disruption that turned the market into what it is today but we can't say that the market wasn't mature at the time.

There were desktop PCs in existence before MacOS and Windows, but they were crude and limited, and didn't survive the big disruption of those 2 OSs, and it was with those two OSs that the market exploded. That was when the PC was a mature product, despite a couple of generations of machines before them.

In exactly the same way, BBOS, WinMobile, and Palm were "pre-modern" smartphones, or maybe they were "Smartphone v1.0", with iOS and Android (and WinPhone and BB10) being "SmartPhone v2.0". Much like those early PCs, you really can't compare them to modern, mature products, and it was that big step forward in product maturity that caused the market to explode.

[terminatorx]

Mike is who built BB... but Mike is also who brought BB to its knees.

Mike got tunnel-visioned, and once tunneled in, he couldn't see the rest of the world around him, and refused to accept the changes that were happening in the industry until it was WAY (YEARS!) too late - and in the ultra-fast-moving world of mobile, being DAYS late is enough to lose billions.

Mike insisted on making all the decisions, and created a corporate culture where "Mike is Right" and no one would ever tell him otherwise. In the beginning, when Mike understood the problems of the day, he did very well (he's a very smart guy), but once he got tunneled in, he lost touch and, as the Brits say, "lost the plot."

Mike should have had a new, advanced OS under way once the first rumors of Apple getting into the smartphone business started going around (2005). He absolutely should have been focusing a good portion of his workday on it when Apple gave a date for its introduction in 2007 (Apple wasn't a company that could be ignored, and that's doubly true if they're entering YOUR business). Even if those opportunities were squandered, there is absolutely ZERO excuse for Mike not having met with his staff on June 30, 2007 (the day after the iPhone official announcement) to create a new department to begin development of a new OS.

Instead, Mike had lots of excuses about how the carriers wouldn't allow it and how it would never work. Mike is the same guy that told Verizon that they shouldn't bother with LTE, and to stay with 3G! He simply couldn't change, and had convinced himself that his solutions to 2002's mobile data problems were the only way forward in 2007. Needless to say he was completely unprepared to meet Verizon's demand for a phone that was competitive with the iPhone, and when the Storm was released, it was a colossal failure that caused massive damage to BB's reputation with the carriers - and Verizon especially, who lost a billion dollars on the Storm.

It was Mike who pushed Android into Verizon's arms - prior to that, Android had been a boutique OS on the smallest US carrier at the time (T-Mobile). The Verizon relationship is what really launched Android.

And how can anyone seriously say that the Playbook was a great product at launch? The Playbook was essentially a dumb screen extender for BBOS, sold at the price of a larger, full-fledged, independent tablet (iPad). Without a BBOS device, it was completely useless. The sales numbers tell that story - they couldn't move inventory without a firesale and a $1B writedown. Again, thanks to Mike's lack of vision.

I totally appreciate Mike's focus on security and privacy (believe it or not), but in order to have any hope of success, he had to be in the game by 2009, or 2010 at the very latest, with a modern, advanced phone OS, which means he'd have had to start work on that OS in 2007. But by 2010, he was just buying an OS that was to be the foundation for his new smartphone OS - WAY too late to be relevant. When you move the 3-year development window over to 2010, you get a product launch on 2013, after the competition has had a 6-7 year head start. BB was already way out of the game when BB10 launched - thanks to Mike.

Yes, BB10 is a great OS, but a great OS with no userbase and no ecosystem is a failed product. Many people correctly predicted the outcome back in 2010 (heck, Kevin wrote a story here in 2009 saying the same thing) - and urged BB to adopt Android then. Even with the security problems it might have had at the time, BB could have, by now, had 5 years of working (with Google and/or independently) to fix those problems, and they'd have been able to sell to consumers and enterprises alike without a massive investment in a failed platform, years of lost sales, etc. BB might well still be the king of business smartphones today.

The very idea that Mike was "right all along" is delusional, and completely ignores the massive harm Mike did to the company he built.

Listen to you. What makes you such an expert on all this? Are you writing a biography on Mike L next? You speak like you were an insider with intimate ties to the players. Were you? Yea didnt think so. Getting tired of you and your know it all BS.

[the1]

In exactly the same way, BBOS, WinMobile, and Palm were "pre-modern" smartphones, or maybe they were "Smartphone v1.0", with iOS and Android (and WinPhone and BB10) being "SmartPhone v2.0". Much like those early PCs, you really can't compare them to modern, mature products, and it was that big step forward in product maturity that caused the market to explode.

This is really all hind sight, as far as modern is concerned. Case in point, the Blackberry Curve 8300 and HTC Tilt was WAY more capable than the iPhone when first released. If you were really about productivity in 2007, you were not going near an iPhone. To be blunt, iPhone at release SUCKED but it caused disruption by approach of design. If BBOS, WinMobile and Palm were 1.0, then the original iPhone was 0.5. It was a step back in functionality but a step forward in design with the use of full capacitive screens.

[Troy Tiscareno]

The first iPhone sucked in many ways, absolutely! No third-party apps (no App Store yet), no cut & paste, and missing several other features. And, of course, it was only 2G data.

The iPhone didn't really take off until the 3GS, and wasn't really "done" and fully useful until then. Similarly, Android wasn't really useful until Froyo (2.2).

But both of these OSs were miles better than their competition when it came to web browsing and support of modern standards, and, perhaps more importantly (with the release of the iPhone 3G and the App Store), both offered strong, focused support for third-party developers, and really listened to what those developers were looking for. It was clear that the missing features and productivity issues were being sorted out (progress was made with each iteration), and in all the other ways, they started ahead and kept pulling further ahead.

It was blatantly obvious to almost everyone that "smartphone v2.0" OSs/ecosystems were the future, but BB stayed focused on their limited, largely obsolete "smartphone v1.0" devices for far too long, and by the time they finally got into the v2.0 game, it was just far too late, and they had squandered their considerable lead and resources.