Playbook support

I'm not normally a complainer - but - I am one of the many who purchased a Playbook 'back in the day'. Support for the Playbook has been withdrawn and the result is that service has been gradually deteriorating - especially over the past 3 months.
My question is this....
Why would anyone want to support a company who abandons their product because it didn't meet sales expectations? Even Billy Gates sees the logic (and the requirement) to support his product for 10+ years. I realized - even when I bought the Playbook that there was a certain amount of risk involved but I counted on the commitment of those Waterloo people to stay the course - oops! Bad decision!
In this day of high competition, standing behind your product is not a gimmick but a real requirement - especially when you see companies like Fitbit recalling and refunding a whole line of products...
Would love to hear other comments and maybe even a reply from Waterloo. In the meantime I'll take a pass on Blackberry purchases.

Apple doesn't support their phones after 3 years either...

Posted via CB10

You are assuming that at the time when the decision to cease supporting the PlayBook OS was made, the alternative was:

1. support it, improve brand perception and lose money

versus

2. cease support, do some damage to the brand and pocket some money

In fact, at that time, the alternative was more like

1. support it, improve brand perception and GO BANKRUPT

versus

2. cease support, do some damage to the brand and save some money for the next 2 years of negative cash flow

Originally Posted by CrackBerry Question

I'm not normally a complainer - but - I am one of the many who purchased a Playbook 'back in the day'. Support for the Playbook has been withdrawn and the result is that service has been gradually deteriorating - especially over the past 3 months.
My question is this....
Why would anyone want to support a company who abandons their product because it didn't meet sales expectations? Even Billy Gates sees the logic (and the requirement) to support his product for 10+ years. I realized - even when I bought the Playbook that there was a certain amount of risk involved but I counted on the commitment of those Waterloo people to stay the course - oops! Bad decision!
In this day of high competition, standing behind your product is not a gimmick but a real requirement - especially when you see companies like Fitbit recalling and refunding a whole line of products...
Would love to hear other comments and maybe even a reply from Waterloo. In the meantime I'll take a pass on Blackberry purchases.

The PB is almost 4 years old, please give examples of electronic devices from released 4 years ago that are still being supported.

Posted via CB10

It's not the Playbook hardware (although I have a couple of items not working)...it's the OS...how long did Microsoft support XP? WE were informed earlier this year that the OS was going to be no longer supported....even Apple. Supports longer than that....

Originally Posted by CrackBerry Question

Why would anyone want to support a company who abandons their product because it didn't meet sales expectations? Even Billy Gates sees the logic (and the requirement) to support his product for 10+ years.

I think you'll find that very few of Billy Gates' products didn't meet sales expectations and the ones that didn't could easily be subsidised by the ones that beat sales expectations by about a million times over. That's how Microsoft can do it.

In BlackBerry's case haven't you ever heard of the phrase "cutting your losses"? BlackBerry lost around a Billion dollars on unsold inventory of PlayBooks at a time when it couldn't afford to. I don't think that includes the R&D spend either so it was a huge money pit that needed to be abandoned if the company was to be saved from bankruptcy.

They did the wrong thing by PlayBook owners in ending support (actually not bringing BB10 to it was the killer) but they did the right thing by the company and the shareholders.

Posted from my BlackBerry Z30 STA100-2 /10.2.1.3247 on O2 UK - Activated on BES10.2.3