1. saintforlife's Avatar
    For having run RIM/BlackBerry to the ground? What do you think is going on in their minds, right now?
    09-05-13 01:13 AM
  2. southlander's Avatar
    Impossible to know.

    Z10STL100-4/10.2.0.1047
    09-05-13 01:16 AM
  3. MobileMadness002's Avatar
    Probably thinking they glad they got out when they did. No matter what they think, they know they did better than you could have done.
    ParmarMania likes this.
    09-05-13 01:17 AM
  4. saintforlife's Avatar
    No matter what they think, they know they did better than you could have done.
    True, but that doesn't mean they didn't screw up royally after the iPhone launch in 2008. They couldn't have done worse if they'd tried.
    09-05-13 01:21 AM
  5. southlander's Avatar
    True, but that doesn't mean they didn't screw up royally after the iPhone launch in 2008.
    And there's also no way to know if BlackBerry could have ever won out. They could've put out the Z10 in 2009 and still not been able to win consumers over in the long run. No way to know.

    Z10STL100-4/10.2.0.1047
    kbz1960 likes this.
    09-05-13 01:23 AM
  6. JasW's Avatar
    Actually, it was 2007 when the iPhone came out.

    Do you think Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis are feeling any remorse?-3qmu.jpg
    09-05-13 07:40 AM
  7. Tre Lawrence's Avatar
    Hindsight is awesome. To be honest, I considered myself fairly well plugged in back then, and I didn't think the iPhone had a chance. Of course, I didn't have shareholders to answer to, so I can excuse my mistake... LOL.
    09-05-13 07:53 AM
  8. lc474's Avatar
    As a business owner who has started, bought and sold them, not an hour goes by without them thinking "what if"... I still think about things from 15 years ago and ask myself what and why, even though I am long removed from the business.
    People can say they are multi millionaires etc, but at this point it's really not about the money to them.
    Going to be an interesting next 6 months for sure
    09-05-13 08:22 AM
  9. redlightblinking's Avatar
    And there's also no way to know if BlackBerry could have ever won out. They could've put out the Z10 in 2009 and still not been able to win consumers over in the long run. No way to know.

    Z10STL100-4/10.2.0.1047
    I think they would have had a much better chance had they reacted that quickly. BB is a victim of timing and a social revolution they didn't see coming, not of a bad product. Timing is everything. Iphone was simply an Ipod (Apples only major consumer success at the time) that was combined with a phone and a touch screen interface, and more importantly, had internet via a data plan. It was the first phone besides BlackBerry to do internet/email. The interface, the user experience, the speed, compared to the efficiency of a BB was lacking. It was basically a toy (an Ipod under glass that lets you browse the internet and take a phone call). BB felt they had the serious tool (and they did) and felt no reason to do anything.

    But then something funny happened. Apps. This isn't something Apple created, it's something 3rd parties created. The snowball got larger and larger and larger. And then, one day, a TV commercial appeared with the slogan: "There's an app for that". Suddenly, BB wasn't competing with iOS (which still sucks in many ways to this very day), they were competing with a community of devs that was making the Iphone larger than the sum of it's parts.

    Before Iphone, only "rich" people and serious business people had a phone that connected to the internet. The Iphone was basically cracking the market of .......everyone else. A good chunk of this "everyone else" didn't' care about push email, or notification profiles, or encryption, or keyboards, or compression, or BBM or efficient operations. They wanted to be cool, and wanted an "app for that". They wanted a logo and a white cord.

    At this point BB should have gone in full force to at least get a good touch screen phone and at least mimic the iphone to prevent the snowball from getting too big. But they did nothing. Soccer moms. Kids. Apple fans. They all started to get into this "iphone" thing, with no knowledge that BB's could even look at the internet. They thought BB's were a 2 way pager. Many people actually were surprised that I could check google on my Curve. One person I know, after Steve Jobs passed away, reflected on how "Steve jobs let us do a google search on our phones". Of course, BlackBerry let us do that, not Steve Jobs, but didn't bother to hire a marketing department to actually tell people this.

    Then, the professionals started to leave, because their husbands and wives, kids and apple friends had one. More apps get made. The ship continues to list to one side and more and more go to Iphone (and at this point to Android phones as well). BB struggles to define itself, or even market itself at all, even though their product is far superior. Then app devs start to ignore BB since so much of the market (that didn't exist before since smart phones were only for rich and business people) is in Iphone or Android. It's too late. Tipping point.

    BB......or any company....could make the best phone ever. It doesn't matter. It's no longer about the phone, it's about the apps. How unbelievably ironic that Apple, a company who's computers would never compete with PCs because there was so many more programs available for Windows, would win the smart phone wars because of Apps, that they don't even make.

    The world is now permanently locked into Apple and Android simply because of the randomness of history. They have apps. Nobody can get apps without users, and nobody can get users without apps.And even though most of these exclusive apps are niche, or trivial, the world is full of trivial consumers. Unless BB can, overnight, find a way to get every app that Apple or Android has, it doesn't matter what they do, especially when they make almost no effort to stop losses and market their new product.
    Last edited by redlightblinking; 09-05-13 at 09:04 AM.
    saintforlife likes this.
    09-05-13 08:35 AM
  10. bobauckland's Avatar
    I love the way everyone jumps on Jim and Mike.
    They may have made mistakes, they also raised this company up from nothing.
    They also laid the groundwork for BB10 and then graciously handed it over to someone else to take all the credit.

    Thor has engineered a situation where he walks away with 55 million dollars even if we get shafted as buyers of BB10 devices, he has overseen at least one delay in BB10, he lied about the PlayBook, he has the charisma of a noodle, and aside from firing a huge portion of the supposedly loyal workforce and still not being able to turn the company around, he has done the sum total of jack squat.

    And yet, for some people, he still comes out of this smelling like roses.

    When the NOC went down for 3 days or so, we got a personal apology from Mike, and some credit to use on apps.
    When he lied about so many things, we have not even had an explanation or a fake apology from Thor.
    RyanGermann likes this.
    09-05-13 09:02 AM
  11. reeneebob's Avatar
    An apology from Mike and some free apps? An apology after he had no choice because they played silent for the first few days. Not to mention he looked annoyed to have to do it.

    Thor was the captain for this latest round but make no mistake, the architects who laid the groundwork for Thor to build on were Jim and Mike. They deserve blame - more so for being too arrogant to respond to the threats.


    [i]BB8130
    09-05-13 09:17 AM
  12. bobauckland's Avatar
    An apology from Mike and some free apps? An apology after he had no choice because they played silent for the first few days. Not to mention he looked annoyed to have to do it.

    Thor was the captain for this latest round but make no mistake, the architects who laid the groundwork for Thor to build on were Jim and Mike. They deserve blame - more so for being too arrogant to respond to the threats.


    [i]BB8130
    And Thor was a huge part of that team when Mike and Jim were in charge.
    On balance of history, I'd go Mike and Jim any day over Thor.
    Mike and Jim built something amazing and then started it's downfall.
    Thor completed it's downfall and has done nothing amazing.

    If Mike and Jim should feel remorse about their company, Thor should feel absolutely awful about what he did to someone else's company, not to mention all the people he fired for no real benefit, or all the customers he flat out lied to.

    Not saying Mike and Jim are blameless mind...
    09-05-13 09:27 AM
  13. saintforlife's Avatar
    I love the way everyone jumps on Jim and Mike.
    They may have made mistakes, they also raised this company up from nothing.
    They also laid the groundwork for BB10 and then graciously handed it over to someone else to take all the credit.
    Lol...BB10 was late by two years. And what they handed over was a sinking ship for someone else to take the blame. Thor was never going to be able to plug the leak.
    09-05-13 10:53 AM
  14. bobauckland's Avatar
    Lol...BB10 was late by two years. And what they handed over was a sinking ship for someone else to take the blame. Thor was never going to be able to plug the leak.
    He's getting a bloody good payoff and lots of goodwill for doing nothing, that's my point.

    And they set up a new exciting direction for the company, laid all the framework for bb10, and thor ran it into the ground.
    They may have done the same if given the chance but they didn't.
    Thor delayed it as well, then bombed it.

    Posted via CB10
    09-05-13 12:45 PM
  15. Dirtymike14's Avatar
    I think Balsillie was more disappointed at not getting an NHL team in Hamilton than he ever did about BlackBerry going down the toilet

    My z10 is a Leafs fan
    09-05-13 01:18 PM
  16. RyanGermann's Avatar
    I think it is a bit harsh to say that Jim / Mike didn't respond to the iPhone.

    BBOS 5 as it was back then was not a touch enabled OS: the selection model was move the ball / trackpad to highlight an item, click to activate.

    A full touchscreen device has touch to activate: the closest analogue to select an item is "press and hold" but that's more of a secondary mouse click (context menu).

    So, given the choice to try to adapt BBOS 5 to work with a touchscreen, FAST, or build a touch-centric OS from the ground up (and basically say at that time "even though we are the international market leader, it's doomed to obsolescence... so stop buying our products NOW!") what they did was engineer hardware with a totally UNIQUE clickable screen technology so that the Touch Screen could act as the trackball / trackpad and the SurePress click was the ball / trackpad click action to "activate".

    So, I think we should collectively praise Jim and Mike for trying to make the best of a bad situation, and also criticize them in hindsight for making the wrong choice: they should have started looking at replacements for BBOS prior to the iPhone release, because even though it was showing its age, they weren't looking ahead 5 years to that which would inevitably replace it.

    Oh, and what they said publically about iPhone? You can bet you bottom dollar that they had an iPhone in their sausage fingers seconds after it was released if not sooner and after using it a bit they would have experienced the innovative approach first hand and said amongst themselves "crap, we have to do something like this, FAST" even if they said "Oh, the iPhone is a fad" publicly.

    Jim and Mike made one huge mistake: not looking ahead to when BBOS could not scale and would need to be replaced... ok, two mistakes: they weren't actively seeking compelling new technologies like capacitive touchscreens and high-res LCDs like Apple was (they put together existing technologies into a compelling product... Apple didn't invent most of the key technologies in iOS... but they sure know how to file patents on "basically, a square, but with rounded corners").

    It's all about giving credit where credit is due. Jim and Mike were scapegoats to the irritated shareholders. The strategy under Thor didn't change. Initially, I thought Thor would actually be an improvement, but in the end, he turns out to a great source of cynicism and disappointment for me.

    I would welcome Mike back in a heartbeat... Jim was the 'business guy' and he and Thor have abject failure to execute in common... BB10 tech is great. Execution on the business processes that bring that excellent technology to market is where BlackBerry under Thor's leadership has not just failed, they have failed spectacularly, and just like the criminal that gets off on a technicality, the bankers after the 2008 meltdown, the car company execs that bankrupted their companies but got huge bonuses to stick around, Thor is going to make out like a bandit... which an apt metaphor, because he's very much like a bandit, after all.
    bobauckland likes this.
    09-05-13 02:18 PM
  17. vmac67's Avatar
    I say fire Thor and bring back Mike and Jim to the company they founded. Hey look at Apple they were at the brink of bankruptcy when they
    brought back Mr. Steve Jobbs back to the helm and he turned it to what it is now. I personally have four Z10`s between me and the my
    teenagers in the house hold and I have 3 Q10`s through my roofing company and I my self think that bb10 is a great OS the phones are
    also great. I just think that there marketing was very poor they should show people more about the functions on the phone all the great
    things you can do with these phones.
    also have a verity of colours and apps that will entice more teens to purchase a Z10 over the iphone.
    I for one miss my black berry torch I wish they had a torch like phone on the BB10 platform.
    09-21-13 02:38 PM
  18. Bold_until_Hybrid_Comes's Avatar
    Old jimmy boy is likely at his beach house somewhere on an island laughing at all this. The only thing he doesn't think is funny is that BBM isn't showing up in the play store for him yet.
    09-21-13 03:22 PM

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