the story of BlackBerry's fall: discontinued products

The most valuable asset a company has is its customers' familiarity with its product line.

Looking at BlackBerry, we see continuous mistakes of failure to support products. I think this has led to its fall:

OS10 announced before OS7 released
OS10 does not have data compression, BIS, customization, or a track pad.
Solution : OS 10 should not have been "announced" and OS7 should not have been discontinued. They should have existed simultaneously, as they appeal to different types of users.

PlayBook completely departs from the BlackBerry DNA. Released without email or BBM.
PlayBook price dropped
No future tablets according to T Heins
BB10 not released for PlayBook as promised.
Solution: should have waited to announce and release PlayBook until more compatible. Should not discontinue the tablet, as you now have 3M tablet owners who will switch to apple or android.

No theme builder for OS7.
Solution: should have devoted the resources to perfect and release it.

No apparent plans for future slider phone.

New OS7 phone does not have competitive specs. Should have given it more Ram.

BlackBerry essentially took a profitable business that was tailing off and abandoned it in favor of a new business that could become more profitable in the future. But they took too many resources away from their existing customers, essentially putting all eggs in one basket.

It takes about 2-3 years for an OS to really gain traction and take off. It was the case for IOS, Android, MSFT. BB10 has only been out for 7 months. That's why they should have developed it without the huge announcements and continued to push OS7 until it was mature- like samsung is doing with tizen. I don't know why BBRY thought it would be different.

Posted via CB10

Phew - was worried this wouldn't be in Armchair CEO and there would be a disturbance in the forum force.

os 7 is not discontinued technically as they have a new OS 7 device that just hit the market

Originally Posted by howarmat

os 7 is not discontinued technically as they have a new OS 7 device that just hit the market

Right but until recently they ignored os7 only promoting os10. Additionally the os7 device was not released with competitive specs. For practical purposes it has been largely ignored by management.

Posted via CB10

Marketing focus does not equate discontinued.

The new phone is a low cost phone with BBOS7, nothing more.

There is a greater issue. It's not discontinued products or marketing. It's product bloat.

Creating 40 products, simply splits your customer base, fractures your support model and complocates your warranty practices. I've shared my experiences on this with blackberry executives before. As well as advising them they need to resume supporting their own products and not using carriers.

There is a reason a one-device model works so well. Blackberry is completing with itself by pursuing this method - nothing more. They should be building a 2 or 3 device only ecosystem (touch, keyboard, slider) and reworking their model to make more profit off apps. Not relying on 40 versions of the same hardware. 40 models is not 40x the sales, that customer is in the store to only buy 1 phone.

Posted via CB from my LE

Track pad, really ???

Posted via CB10

How does BlackBerry 10 compare to Samsung's Tizen? As far as I know, isn't Tizen just a hobby project of Samsung? Not anything they are willing to bet the farm on (they are already betting on Android). BB 10 is BlackBerry's messiah project.

I respectfully completely disagree that BB7 and BB10 should coexist. Why would BlackBerry have 2 OS's out there competing with one another? I also don't think that the lack of BIS and a trackpad are cons of BB10 at all.

*waiting for BelfastDispatcher to appear* lol

Originally Posted by treaker

Track pad, really ???

Posted via CB10

Someone will say that we need to go back to the side track wheel. The screen is the new track pad.

If I was able to go from physical keyboard only to using the Z10 anyone can. Same thing for the track pad. My wife still has the 9780 Bold and I can't go back to the track pad.

Move forward folks.

Posted via CB10 on my Z10!