1. Jason Page's Avatar


    At about 5:34 the author of the video makes a very good point that the market of phones seem to ignore:

    "What I realize is that I do not want phone that limits my communication. What I don't need is all the notifications, social media and battery drain issues, or a phone that is overwhelming.

    What I really want is the smartphone functionality stripped of all the gizmos."

    What I would like to see is something like the new Nokia 3310 with a Blackberry Qwerty Keyboard and a Blackberry thumb track pad and absolutely NO TOUCH SCREEN! And may I add: removable battery to allow manufactures like Mogen and Seido to deliver the devices expanded battery options.

    Can this be done? Is there a neglected market for it? I think so. Less is more...go!
    lukeoverhere likes this.
    01-05-19 12:37 PM
  2. Thud Hardsmack's Avatar
    I'm thinking your concept device is not what the author wants. You want a Bold or Curve (prior to 99xx), he wants social networking with no notifications.
    01-05-19 05:37 PM
  3. Troy Tiscareno's Avatar
    While there is definitely some nostalgia, I think that the market for "dumbed down smartphones" is pretty tiny, and I suspect that niche is going to quickly disappear. The result might be feature phones with better interfaces and a few more features, but people who want a smartphone want a smartphone, and it won't take long to realize that it's easy enough to turn off the notifications you don't want on any real smartphone, but it's hard to live without GPS or Uber or any of the other things that have become part of normal daily life.
    01-11-19 08:09 PM
  4. Chuck Finley69's Avatar
    For some reason, I just had a mental image of a modern day Gilligan's island.....
    01-11-19 08:16 PM
  5. Jason Page's Avatar
    I'm thinking your concept device is not what the author wants. You want a Bold or Curve (prior to 99xx), he wants social networking with no notifications.
    True, I'm just illustrating a need for sanity in phone functionality. We have become consumers of pig phones that slush in exclusiveness for no good reason. And that slush counters common sense function, usability and practicality.

    The Bold and Curve phones were beautiful in that realm. You didn't need to load the phone up with a bunch of overhead to get it near practical and functional. It just was!
    01-15-19 08:15 PM
  6. Chuck Finley69's Avatar
    True, I'm just illustrating a need for sanity in phone functionality. We have become consumers of pig phones that slush in exclusiveness for no good reason. And that slush counters common sense function, usability and practicality.

    The Bold and Curve phones were beautiful in that realm. You didn't need to load the phone up with a bunch of overhead to get it near practical and functional. It just was!
    Society changes and consumers expect technology changes along with it.
    Laura Knotek likes this.
    01-15-19 10:16 PM
  7. lukeoverhere's Avatar
    Hi Jason, I love you for writing this. The Blackberry Bold (best selling phone of 2010) is the no doubt the greatest efficiency highly intuitive input device ever created, and needs to be revived. You can still get them online and your mobile carrier still supports the data systems to keep them synced (we have 11 phones and lines and data connections, and they're unbelievable, one of the reasoned we started our business which has grown every year for 7 years, incredible computing power, highly reliable, intuitive interface and more importantly typing and revision with mouse trackpad, and great battery life too BTW). Would pay lots of money for a new iteration of the Bold 9900 with new cpu, ram, and antenna, would revolution our business all over again, best of luck and hope you find what you're looking for.
    01-19-19 06:41 PM
  8. lukeoverhere's Avatar
    The eerieness with which Blackberry decided to discontinue original blockbuster-selling BBOS in 2013 despite still growing users until December 2012 still blows my mind.

    They took a highly popular java-based os BBOS and while still popular began selling an alien, unproven linux-based os even calling it 'BB10' despite totally unrelated to former one, and it has never sold worth a damn, and nor the later android mods. Why? Blackberry was popular with people who needed to be articulate while writing and revising, like a say traditional computer mouse and keyboard, they simply never stopped to understand this, nor the fact that people would pay substantial sums of money to keep it going. If you want to consume buy a consumer phone, if you want to constantly battle mis-presses, mis-swypes, and terrible autocorrect, get a BBOS device.

    Blackberrys users grew exponentially when they took their highly optimized email-centric OS and combined it with a highly effective mouse trackwheel/ball/pad in 2007 and continued to do so until 2013. This is when exponential growth stopped (and growth in general). Wish Blackberry would notice it's history and get back to its roots and begin giving again to the public and businesses what they want, another quality, built email-centric BBOS device.
    01-19-19 06:52 PM
  9. Bla1ze's Avatar
    The eerieness with which Blackberry decided to discontinue original blockbuster-selling BBOS in 2013 despite still growing users until December 2012 still blows my mind.
    That's some revisionist history there.
    Ecm, john_v, conite and 3 others like this.
    01-19-19 07:57 PM
  10. conite's Avatar
    The eerieness with which Blackberry decided to discontinue original blockbuster-selling BBOS in 2013 despite still growing users until December 2012 still blows my mind.

    They took a highly popular java-based os BBOS and while still popular began selling an alien, unproven linux-based os even calling it 'BB10' despite totally unrelated to former one, and it has never sold worth a damn, and nor the later android mods. Why? Blackberry was popular with people who needed to be articulate while writing and revising, like a say traditional computer mouse and keyboard, they simply never stopped to understand this, nor the fact that people would pay substantial sums of money to keep it going. If you want to consume buy a consumer phone, if you want to constantly battle mis-presses, mis-swypes, and terrible autocorrect, get a BBOS device.

    Blackberrys users grew exponentially when they took their highly optimized email-centric OS and combined it with a highly effective mouse trackwheel/ball/pad in 2007 and continued to do so until 2013. This is when exponential growth stopped (and growth in general). Wish Blackberry would notice it's history and get back to its roots and begin giving again to the public and businesses what they want, another quality, built email-centric BBOS device.
    BBOS sales peaked in calendar (not fiscal) 2010, and then started to fall rapidly. The platform was up against its technical limits to evolve any further.

    BBOS sales - year ending March 31 (in millions sold):

    2010: 36.6

    2011: 52.3

    2012: 49.1

    2013: 36.1

    2014: 15.5

    The last BBOS device (9720) was launched in fiscal 2014 (Sep 2013).
    Last edited by conite; 01-19-19 at 11:25 PM.
    01-19-19 08:10 PM
  11. lukeoverhere's Avatar
    Hardware sales are different than users. Users grew and peaked at end of 2012 at 80 million (before ever selling bb1 0), after doubling almost every year for 5 years. How was their technology limited after knocking it out of the park for half a decade?

    And another fact, they -stopped- making BBOS in 2013 to aid sales of 'BB10', hence the John Chen "reintroduction" of Blackberry Bold in 2014 (when they began making them again) - yes that had actually stopped production of the BBOS devices that -were- selling to aid the sales of BB10 in 2013 - THEY CANNBALIZED THEMSELVES. Article from Verge 03/28/2014 "Last month, Chen announced that the company would introduce more smartphones with keyboards to appeal to its core audience, and today he revealed that the BlackBerry Bold, a smartphone first introduced in 2011, will be reentering production."

    And yes, of course sales for one generation of Bold slowed, just like Galaxy S1, and the first iPhone. Blackberry dumped their gen-1 gold device of crowning glory like a dirty diaper, instead of simply doing what apple and android did year after year' incrementally updating their clearly valuable and successful device, and selling another iteration in a well monetized fashion.

    And no offense but I've heard "technical limits" about the BBOS before but never seen anyone expand on it on specifically aside from lack of Adobe flash which the Opera browser did quite a bit for. What limitations are you referring please?

    Did it stream netflix, no but I could write and talk and like I didn't have a toothbrush in my mouth, and copy, cut, and paste, home, end, page up and down, like a normal legit computer, not the endless typing battle every android and iPhone seem to make it.

    Power users would pay -big- money to continue BBOS, the totally asinine weirdos like Eric Schmidt, Barack Obama, Kim Kardashian....
    01-20-19 12:33 AM
  12. Chuck Finley69's Avatar
    Hardware sales are different than users. Users grew and peaked at end of 2012 at 80 million (before ever selling bb1 0), after doubling almost every year for 5 years. How was their technology limited after knocking it out of the park for half a decade?

    And another fact, they -stopped- making BBOS in 2013 to aid sales of 'BB10', hence the John Chen "reintroduction" of Blackberry Bold in 2014 (when they began making them again) - yes that had actually stopped production of the BBOS devices that -were- selling to aid the sales of BB10 in 2013 - THEY CANNBALIZED THEMSELVES. Article from Verge 03/28/2014 "Last month, Chen announced that the company would introduce more smartphones with keyboards to appeal to its core audience, and today he revealed that the BlackBerry Bold, a smartphone first introduced in 2011, will be reentering production."

    And yes, of course sales for one generation of Bold slowed, just like Galaxy S1, and the first iPhone. Blackberry dumped their gen-1 gold device of crowning glory like a dirty diaper, instead of simply doing what apple and android did year after year' incrementally updating their clearly valuable and successful device, and selling another iteration in a well monetized fashion.

    And no offense but I've heard "technical limits" about the BBOS before but never seen anyone expand on it on specifically aside from lack of Adobe flash which the Opera browser did quite a bit for. What limitations are you referring please?

    Did it stream netflix, no but I could write and talk and like I didn't have a toothbrush in my mouth, and copy, cut, and paste, home, end, page up and down, like a normal legit computer, not the endless typing battle every android and iPhone seem to make it.

    Power users would pay -big- money to continue BBOS, the totally asinine weirdos like Eric Schmidt, Barack Obama, Kim Kardashian....
    In 2007-2008, BB should have partnered up with Google like other Android OEMs and began development of BBAndroid or whatever you’d like to call it. Either way BBOS ecosystem was nonexistent compared with Android/IOS 5-6 years ago. It’s done it’s job well providing BIS revenues to BB for as long as it did.
    01-20-19 07:28 AM
  13. conite's Avatar
    Hardware sales are different than users. Users grew and peaked at end of 2012 at 80 million (before ever selling bb1 0), after doubling almost every year for 5 years. How was their technology limited after knocking it out of the park for half a decade?

    And another fact, they -stopped- making BBOS in 2013 to aid sales of 'BB10', hence the John Chen "reintroduction" of Blackberry Bold in 2014 (when they began making them again) - yes that had actually stopped production of the BBOS devices that -were- selling to aid the sales of BB10 in 2013 - THEY CANNBALIZED THEMSELVES. Article from Verge 03/28/2014 "Last month, Chen announced that the company would introduce more smartphones with keyboards to appeal to its core audience, and today he revealed that the BlackBerry Bold, a smartphone first introduced in 2011, will be reentering production."

    And yes, of course sales for one generation of Bold slowed, just like Galaxy S1, and the first iPhone. Blackberry dumped their gen-1 gold device of crowning glory like a dirty diaper, instead of simply doing what apple and android did year after year' incrementally updating their clearly valuable and successful device, and selling another iteration in a well monetized fashion.

    And no offense but I've heard "technical limits" about the BBOS before but never seen anyone expand on it on specifically aside from lack of Adobe flash which the Opera browser did quite a bit for. What limitations are you referring please?

    Did it stream netflix, no but I could write and talk and like I didn't have a toothbrush in my mouth, and copy, cut, and paste, home, end, page up and down, like a normal legit computer, not the endless typing battle every android and iPhone seem to make it.

    Power users would pay -big- money to continue BBOS, the totally asinine weirdos like Eric Schmidt, Barack Obama, Kim Kardashian....
    It's hard to know where to even start with this. Sigh.

    It sounds more like a history lesson is in order.
    Last edited by conite; 01-20-19 at 08:00 AM.
    Bbnivende likes this.
    01-20-19 07:50 AM
  14. lukeoverhere's Avatar
    Please enlighten me. Most days, I wish I was wrong.

    I built a small company that still runs on BBOS and it has worked very well, no doubt the competitive advantage for us. And so it is easy for me to believe everything I've found online and in Blackberry Annual Reports.

    The only thing I can't prove is the exact amount of BBOS users 2012-2018 (vs others paying SAFs), which is such a massively important statistic. Why wouldn't the company publish something this important when switching from a successful os to trying something new? If it was truly failing spectacularly or is limited in some way why not be transparent about it? Especially when in 2014 you have 60+ million people invested?

    But of course from my experience the os experience for bb10 and android blackberries simply isn't even in the same galaxy as a business-level articulate writing / revising / planning tool and the clear differentiator is an effective mouse trackpad, keyboard, and original os that is optimized for messages, not the bb10 square peg round hole they carved out in a year or two (who wouldn't want the successful system ergonomically designed over 1-2 decades?

    I begrudgingly carry a Keytwo but only because essential for Maps, Dropbox, working with MS office files, Evernote (all of which use to work just fine on BBOS); my real work and all field people in our company happens on Bold 9900s.

    Would love to see legit historical data saying otherwise, although I feel like I may just receive more offhand, condescending comments with anything of substance.
    01-20-19 12:51 PM
  15. conite's Avatar
    Please enlighten me. Most days, I wish I was wrong.

    I built a small company that still runs on BBOS and it has worked very well, no doubt the competitive advantage for us. And so it is easy for me to believe everything I've found online and in Blackberry Annual Reports.

    The only thing I can't prove is the exact amount of BBOS users 2012-2018 (vs others paying SAFs), which is such a massively important statistic. Why wouldn't the company publish something this important when switching from a successful os to trying something new? If it was truly failing spectacularly or is limited in some way why not be transparent about it? Especially when in 2014 you have 60+ million people invested?

    But of course from my experience the os experience for bb10 and android blackberries simply isn't even in the same galaxy as a business-level articulate writing / revising / planning tool and the clear differentiator is an effective mouse trackpad, keyboard, and original os that is optimized for messages, not the bb10 square peg round hole they carved out in a year or two (who wouldn't want the successful system ergonomically designed over 1-2 decades?

    I begrudgingly carry a Keytwo but only because essential for Maps, Dropbox, working with MS office files, Evernote (all of which use to work just fine on BBOS); my real work and all field people in our company happens on Bold 9900s.

    Would love to see legit historical data saying otherwise, although I feel like I may just receive more offhand, condescending comments with anything of substance.
    BBOS sales were nose-diving*, and SAF would ultimately follow along with it. BlackBerry knew they needed something to replace that revenue - and hopefully before the former completely collapsed. They hoped a modern ecosystem (which required a modern device) would be that revenue, but alas, they were 4 years too late to the party.

    They were on the literal brink in the fall of 2013 - months away from insolvency (they had a billion dollars and owed a billion and a half to suppliers).

    The decision was made to pivot to enterprise / end-point management software, and soft-land devices as they burned through their supplier commitments.

    BlackBerry Android was just a last minute exercise (low cost and low risk venture), the alternative of which was no devices at all.

    * the collapse started more than a year earlier in the 1st world, and it was the emerging low-end world market that fuelled BBOS between 2011 and 2013 - and everyone knew that was not sustainable
    Last edited by conite; 01-20-19 at 08:33 PM.
    01-20-19 02:14 PM
  16. Chuck Finley69's Avatar
    Please enlighten me. Most days, I wish I was wrong.

    I built a small company that still runs on BBOS and it has worked very well, no doubt the competitive advantage for us. And so it is easy for me to believe everything I've found online and in Blackberry Annual Reports.

    The only thing I can't prove is the exact amount of BBOS users 2012-2018 (vs others paying SAFs), which is such a massively important statistic. Why wouldn't the company publish something this important when switching from a successful os to trying something new? If it was truly failing spectacularly or is limited in some way why not be transparent about it? Especially when in 2014 you have 60+ million people invested?

    But of course from my experience the os experience for bb10 and android blackberries simply isn't even in the same galaxy as a business-level articulate writing / revising / planning tool and the clear differentiator is an effective mouse trackpad, keyboard, and original os that is optimized for messages, not the bb10 square peg round hole they carved out in a year or two (who wouldn't want the successful system ergonomically designed over 1-2 decades?

    I begrudgingly carry a Keytwo but only because essential for Maps, Dropbox, working with MS office files, Evernote (all of which use to work just fine on BBOS); my real work and all field people in our company happens on Bold 9900s.

    Would love to see legit historical data saying otherwise, although I feel like I may just receive more offhand, condescending comments with anything of substance.
    BBOS has been supported in conjunction with BB10 and BBAndroid since 2013 and 2015 respectively. If the demand was there, don't you think newer BBOS hardware would have been offered?
    01-20-19 03:08 PM
  17. lukeoverhere's Avatar
    Absolutely untrue. Hardware sales, software revenue, and users did not -until- deciding to scrap old successful BBOS - this is the most critical point in all of this.

    Directly from Blackberry Annual Reports, year-over-year -growth- for:
    a. software (BES & SAF) revenue 2010 50%, 2011 41.6%
    b. hardware sales -growth- 2010 33%, 2011 34.1%
    c. Blackberry users -growth- 2010 64%, 2011 71%

    And so with these incredibly strong statistics, Blackberry decides to make an alien QNX / linux-based OS? As though the special recipe of success carefully baked into BBOS was something they could replicate overnight just because Google found a linux os that was doing it? Android of course was designed to be inefficient at the beginning to draw people in around search and ultimately consuming social media and media in general; and this is where typing really becomes important - how does typing affect google's most important CSF search? If you cannot type correctly or easily, how many more searches will you make (many probably erroneous)? Pretty big revenue generator if you ask me.

    Back on topic - And what happened after talk of completely trashing BBOS? Only then did hardware sales alone start to falter and slowly (and not SAFs!) started to descend for the very first time in 2012 (and who knows this is probably when they discontinued production of BBOS to begin plying for bb10). SAFs continued growing. Users kept growing. This is what really happened in four years after iPhone and android.

    Year-over-year changes AFTER discussing throwing away the only successful business the company had ever known (and one has to ask how would this affect any and all decisions from management, to suppliers, to customers thereafter?):
    a. software (BES & SAF) revenue 2012 29% still growth, 2013 first drop ever -4.6% (5 years after iphone/android)
    b. hardware sales 2012 first drop ever -13.2%, 2013 -52.2% (remember this is the year they had stopped producing BBOS devices without telling anyone!!, and it seems to me possibly the year before as well especially since users continued to go -up- during 2012!!).
    c. Blackberry users -growth- 2012 14.2% up!, in 2013 did users go down in proportion with hardware sales NOPE, barely 1/10 of the user loss as hardware revenue loss, only down -5% (this is seems to imply a drawback in BBOS 2012 production).

    It cannot be coincidence that the appearance of an message-centric OS -and- mouse trackpad like computers of old suddenly resulted in exponential growth and then as soon as They were removed from the market the growth stalled. People enjoy communicating effectively and would pay good money for it (as evidenced by the people still paying Blackberry today after 7 years), and Blackberry did not let the improvements in computer processing aid an evolving Bold series and what it represented.

    People will always want to communicate effectively and easily, and without constant notifications and overly complex settings, separated messaging systems, screen-churning poor-built hardware. If only half of the current Blackberry users re-upped with a new quality-built BBOS properly monetized at high price and higher prices for SAFs how much money would Blackberry and TCL make? They still have every option to finally accept they threw the baby out with the bath water, and begin to re-grow the strong and valuable roots they still have available. Bet Kim Kardashian would even do a free spot!

    *again, would love to hear an 'technical limitations' you earlier mentioned, as far as I can tell they're the -least- limited, especially in terms of having a phone that allows people to effective communicate (nuts-to-bolts)
    01-20-19 05:26 PM
  18. conite's Avatar
    Absolutely untrue. Hardware sales, software revenue, and users did not -until- deciding to scrap old successful BBOS - this is the most critical point in all of this.

    Directly from Blackberry Annual Reports, year-over-year -growth- for:
    a. software (BES & SAF) revenue 2010 50%, 2011 41.6%
    b. hardware sales -growth- 2010 33%, 2011 34.1%
    c. Blackberry users -growth- 2010 64%, 2011 71%

    And so with these incredibly strong statistics, Blackberry decides to make an alien QNX / linux-based OS? As though the special recipe of success carefully baked into BBOS was something they could replicate overnight just because Google found a linux os that was doing it? Android of course was designed to be inefficient at the beginning to draw people in around search and ultimately consuming social media and media in general; and this is where typing really becomes important - how does typing affect google's most important CSF search? If you cannot type correctly or easily, how many more searches will you make (many probably erroneous)? Pretty big revenue generator if you ask me.

    Back on topic - And what happened after talk of completely trashing BBOS? Only then did hardware sales alone start to falter and slowly (and not SAFs!) started to descend for the very first time in 2012 (and who knows this is probably when they discontinued production of BBOS to begin plying for bb10). SAFs continued growing. Users kept growing. This is what really happened in four years after iPhone and android.

    Year-over-year changes AFTER discussing throwing away the only successful business the company had ever known (and one has to ask how would this affect any and all decisions from management, to suppliers, to customers thereafter?):
    a. software (BES & SAF) revenue 2012 29% still growth, 2013 first drop ever -4.6% (5 years after iphone/android)
    b. hardware sales 2012 first drop ever -13.2%, 2013 -52.2% (remember this is the year they had stopped producing BBOS devices without telling anyone!!, and it seems to me possibly the year before as well especially since users continued to go -up- during 2012!!).
    c. Blackberry users -growth- 2012 14.2% up!, in 2013 did users go down in proportion with hardware sales NOPE, barely 1/10 of the user loss as hardware revenue loss, only down -5% (this is seems to imply a drawback in BBOS 2012 production).

    It cannot be coincidence that the appearance of an message-centric OS -and- mouse trackpad like computers of old suddenly resulted in exponential growth and then as soon as They were removed from the market the growth stalled. People enjoy communicating effectively and would pay good money for it (as evidenced by the people still paying Blackberry today after 7 years), and Blackberry did not let the improvements in computer processing aid an evolving Bold series and what it represented.

    People will always want to communicate effectively and easily, and without constant notifications and overly complex settings, separated messaging systems, screen-churning poor-built hardware. If only half of the current Blackberry users re-upped with a new quality-built BBOS properly monetized at high price and higher prices for SAFs how much money would Blackberry and TCL make? They still have every option to finally accept they threw the baby out with the bath water, and begin to re-grow the strong and valuable roots they still have available. Bet Kim Kardashian would even do a free spot!

    *again, would love to hear an 'technical limitations' you earlier mentioned, as far as I can tell they're the -least- limited, especially in terms of having a phone that allows people to effective communicate (nuts-to-bolts)
    Look, the fact is that sales in NA and Europe started to tank in 2010, and overall sales started to spiral down in 2011. SAF would ultimately follow. BlackBerry knew BBOS was finished in 2010, and scrambled to buy QNX in order to build something competitive - but they were already too late.

    They had squeezed everything they could out of BBOS - but the hourglass was becoming the norm and not the exception, data compression was no longer desirable, carriers were balking at the extra fees, and iOS/Android were gobbling up the world.
    Troy Tiscareno likes this.
    01-20-19 08:40 PM
  19. lukeoverhere's Avatar
    2010 was the year they had the best selling phone in the world at 53 million units --?; I still don't understand why you're using words like "plummeting" and 'tanking' at all? The annual reports directly contradict what you're saying so respectfully, as it really sounds like you believe this and me same on my end, can you please tell me where you're getting your information exactly?

    My experience with 40+ devices
    1. 'Hourglass?' My Bold still holds 10,000+ contacts w/ basically instantaneous real-time search, thousands of calendar items, and it lets me quickly answer 300-500 messages per day - just blows away every failed bb10 and android device in writing and revising speeds with mouse trackpad, accessing and updating contacts / CRM and calendar items (bb10 took 40-60% more time & steps to enter a single calendar item, was ridiculous), and even basic net searches - so you're telling me they traded this speedy device on the auspices it was slow instead for a set of even slower more overly complicated devices that could do less (and we're less popular) but had better browsing power? Now sure I've had to scale back the time frame of synchronization for my messages and calendar items over the years to compensate for growing hour glass but how is that not a simple upgrade the processor and ram sort of a solution like any system? And certainly case for all the androids I've ever had to purchase.

    2. 'Data compression was no longer desirable' - who is this important to please?

    3. 'Carriers balking' never turned into anything though did it? - or did they charge Blackberry more money at the time perhaps? We've had the same fees with our carrier since 2011, but our BES link provider has raised rates a couple times and power to them, we would pay 10x the amount they charge.

    4. 'ios/android gobbling up the world?' Blackberry didn't lose a single user until 2013, this company was not getting gobbled (and I cannot understand why you keep saying so); just because apple & android had market share doesn't mean they took it from anyone; they created a totally -new- market share different from Blackberry's because they sure weren't taking their customers!; why does no one recognize this? This is what clearly makes Blackberry's customers -so- unique and so loyal too, as they were the slowest leaving customer n history at 1-2% month for 7 years straight in one of the most competitive industries.

    Yes Blackberry tried and never got the consumer market, but they forgot or haven't yet realized they had a particular market locked down (and one that would pay for more quality, unfortunately they're stuck on the non-quality route currently). If they were overweight into their suppliers why didn't they just reissue a new annual device like the rest of the world had been doing and revamp their monetization of it all at higher prices? All the issues I've had with my Bold am pretty sure would be resolved with just a new processor, ram, & antenna to slow down any hourglass on my power-using, and bet many others feel the same.

    If you have specific data from reputable sites showing different data than the Blackberry Annual reports, again respectfully, I would very much like to see it (am happy to pay for access). Specifically why you're saying hardware, SAFs, and users were down when they were up - nothing appeared to be jeopardy until they decided to blow it up. Also you mentioned BBOS (excluding bb10?) sales by year; if possible where did you get this information please?
    01-21-19 08:22 AM
  20. conite's Avatar
    2010 was the year they had the best selling phone in the world at 53 million units --?; I still don't understand why you're using words like "plummeting" and 'tanking' at all? The annual reports directly contradict what you're saying
    Directly from the financial statements: BBOS sales - year ending March 31 (in millions sold):

    2010: 36.6

    2011: 52.3

    2012: 49.1

    2013: 36.1

    2014: 15.5

    2010 (year end March 2011) saw NA and European sales start to collapse. 2011 and 2012 was propped up by Indonesia - but still dove overall in 2012.

    I knew people at BlackBerry. They were in total panic mode during 2010 when they saw the doors coming off.

    "Total users" is irrelevant, as many held on to old curves and bolds for a long time - especially corporate and government. Sales show trends.

    When your trendline has a sharp negative slope, and your competitors' trendlines have sharp positive slopes, the math isn't very hard. Worse, your platform is technically capped from further development.

    I'm not going to play the revisionist history game any more. This was all put to bed eons ago.
    Last edited by conite; 01-21-19 at 09:29 AM.
    01-21-19 08:36 AM
  21. Chuck Finley69's Avatar
    BBOS sales were nose-diving*, and SAF would ultimately follow along with it. BlackBerry knew they needed something to replace that revenue - and hopefully before the former completely collapsed. They hoped a modern ecosystem (which required a modern device) would be that revenue, but alas, they were 4 years too late to the party.

    They were on the literal brink in the fall of 2013 - months away from insolvency (they had a billion dollars and owed a billion and a half to suppliers).

    The decision was made to pivot to enterprise / end-point management software, and soft-land devices as they burned through their supplier commitments.

    BlackBerry Android was just a last minute exercise (low cost and low risk venture), the alternative of which was no devices at all.

    * the collapse started more than a year earlier in the 1st world, and it was the emerging low-end world market that fuelled BBOS between 2011 and 2013 - and everyone knew that was not sustainable
    BB didn’t blow up BBOS with BB10. It was already losing individual and corporate support to Android/IOS long before 2013 and beyond. The fact that BB10 was delayed about year or so proves this. Any mobile OS success including BB10 killed SAF revenue for BB so I don’t see any reason why they wanted to kill BBOS since they’ve let it bleed out. Chen even tried reviving for additional cash flow.
    01-21-19 01:26 PM
  22. lukeoverhere's Avatar
    Finally I understand you're talking about only a portion of total sales, and I'm talking about total sales (you're quoting north America and European sales only not the actual overall, and it would seem saying Indonesia doesn't matter despite over 17 million devices).

    This doesn't change the fact they had 80 million BBOS users starting January 2013 - yes they missed the consumer phone boat, wah-wah, every one gets that. But for all intents and purposes these 80 million customers hung on like no smartphone customer ever, ever so slowly actually leaving as users (perhaps waiting for an upgraded version of the device they had?). Users are in no way irrelevant, it's a pulse on on your clients; and people clearly wanted more of the same. Why didn't Blackberry think to update pricing for software and safs to offset hardware revenue loss? This also would have bought them time to improve on BBOS and offer up at least some kind of incrementally improved version.

    Have you seen the 2.5+ year forum post here for "9900:Resurgence of popularity!" with well over 8,000 posts? Pretty good number of activity for any post in here. I don't have hard numbers of course but why this damn phone such an intriguing subject still? Because it has some magic. And my dollars say that means a healthy long-term revenue stream in service access fees, especially in revamped to capitalize on the diehards (8 million or so remaining users correct? If I am wrong on this please let me know) that really want it. Come on any decent business person has to think, whoever is hanging onto their 2011 device in this day and age has either an obsession or is crazy, and either way should properly monetize the heck out of it. Why not simply charge premium prices to access BBOS & BES and make it a super-excellent revenue generator? They're a software company now anyway right? Surely any one would understand if they revamped their contracts by now - do you think this is viable at all?
    01-21-19 11:09 PM
  23. conite's Avatar
    Finally I understand you're talking about only a portion of total sales, and I'm talking about total sales (you're quoting north America and European sales only not the actual overall...
    No, I was quoting overall sales.

    Just stop. BBOS imploded, and it's never coming back.

    BB10 was a financial disaster, and it's never coming back.

    If a future semi-smart, locked-down phone ever shows its face, it won't be from BlackBerry (they are long gone from the hardware game), but it will most likely feature some version of Android - and it may even incorporate BlackBerry Secure. See Punkt MP02.
    Last edited by conite; 01-21-19 at 11:47 PM.
    01-21-19 11:23 PM
  24. lukeoverhere's Avatar
    Bottomline they've generated significant SAFs revenue off these devices for 7 years without lifting a finger - whatever infrastructure they maintain to keep BBOS / BES running must've been bought and paid for long ago, otherwise it would've folded like everything else. The fact they've kept it alive means is an in-the-black reason ($121 million last year, not as much as before but not pocket change); therefore there must be a price they could rethink it at which it would continue to make overwhelming financial sense - am pretty certain we would pay that price. The fall from grace though probably makes this very difficult to see.
    01-22-19 06:51 AM
  25. conite's Avatar
    Bottomline they've generated significant SAFs revenue off these devices for 7 years without lifting a finger - whatever infrastructure they maintain to keep BBOS / BES running must've been bought and paid for long ago, otherwise it would've folded like everything else. The fact they've kept it alive means is an in-the-black reason ($121 million last year, not as much as before but not pocket change); therefore there must be a price they could rethink it at which it would continue to make overwhelming financial sense - am pretty certain we would pay that price. The fall from grace though probably makes this very difficult to see.
    01-22-19 07:56 AM
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