[dicks-webos]

BB10 is a wonderful OS but by now many devs have invested in iOS and Android. Companies have started living with the shortcomings of iOS and Android in a corporate market. Once companies make a standards decision you're in or out.

Fact is BB is 3-4 years too late to the smartphone market. I hope they survive but besides cool stuff they need ultra cool marketing. If marketing get users to see "I'm cool because I have a BB" - then there is a chance. But they have 2-3 quarters to get a kick-*** promo plan executed. If they continue with the lame stuff they are pumping out now, they are finished.

[scrannel]

So, shall we rename this thread to: "Mommy, Mommy, I wet my pants?"

[sinsin07]

I would bet my life on it.

Posted via CB10

Don't cheapen your life that way.

[oqpq]

My first post on CB forums so wish me luck:

I'm only posting to draw some attention on a customer niche that has not been covered in the comments so far. I am a 9780 user since 2010 and before that I've been using a countless amount of phones, starting with an ancient bulky Ericsson that weighed more than my daily meals. Three years ago I left a career in journalism to found my very small company and thus I chose BB to always be in touch with my customers. I only use a currency app, a weather app, whatsapp and google maps. I need nothing more and the 9780 is hands down the best phone I have ever used: solid build, decent battery and camera, reliable. As a telephone it works flawlessly, the mails can be read and replied to, the calendar is as good as any.

I can't imagine that I am the only guy who wants the basics to work flawlessly. However, I have lots of friends with Samsungs, HTCs, iPhones who experience problems with the most basic of functions, from signal loss to random freezes or resets. In three years of operation I have NEVER experienced a reset, freeze or dropped call. Now to the bottom line.

There are A LOT of people that only use phones as productivity devices, that do not need large ecosystems, do not need an extra 0.25 inch on screen size or 200mhz on their processors. In my mind, I associate BB with quality of build and reliability. I can buy any phone on the market but I have no need for it and if time comes, I will not jump in the Android boat because my girlfriend's HTC and GS3 (her 4th android since my purchase of BB) experience random resets on wireless couch browsing mode while my ancient 9780 never has.

I am not saying that 9780 is the perfect phone. I just can't find anything against this perfect working tool. But if I ever decide to get an upgrade I will buy the BB because my experience with the device as a productivity tool has been perfect. And as far as the BB10 headlines go, I could write you many stories about how online content needs to be written today in order to draw clicks. But you know it too. BB will be afloat as long as they have patience.

[russworman]

My first post on CB forums so wish me luck:

I'm only posting to draw some attention on a customer niche that has not been covered in the comments so far. I am a 9780 user since 2010 and before that I've been using a countless amount of phones, starting with an ancient bulky Ericsson that weighed more than my daily meals. Three years ago I left a career in journalism to found my very small company and thus I chose BB to always be in touch with my customers. I only use a currency app, a weather app, whatsapp and google maps. I need nothing more and the 9780 is hands down the best phone I have ever used: solid build, decent battery and camera, reliable. As a telephone it works flawlessly, the mails can be read and replied to, the calendar is as good as any.

I can't imagine that I am the only guy who wants the basics to work flawlessly. However, I have lots of friends with Samsungs, HTCs, iPhones who experience problems with the most basic of functions, from signal loss to random freezes or resets. In three years of operation I have NEVER experienced a reset, freeze or dropped call. Now to the bottom line.

There are A LOT of people that only use phones as productivity devices, that do not need large ecosystems, do not need an extra 0.25 inch on screen size or 200mhz on their processors. In my mind, I associate BB with quality of build and reliability. I can buy any phone on the market but I have no need for it and if time comes, I will not jump in the Android boat because my girlfriend's HTC and GS3 (her 4th android since my purchase of BB) experience random resets on wireless couch browsing mode while my ancient 9780 never has.

I am not saying that 9780 is the perfect phone. I just can't find anything against this perfect working tool. But if I ever decide to get an upgrade I will buy the BB because my experience with the device as a productivity tool has been perfect. And as far as the BB10 headlines go, I could write you many stories about how online content needs to be written today in order to draw clicks. But you know it too. BB will be afloat as long as they have patience.

Welcome to CrackBerry!

Posted via CB10

[Bfalcon1]

Blackberry can not stay on this course for long. I think a breakup of the company or a strategic alliance is the only option for survival.

[kevinnugent]

Don't cheapen your life that way.

I'm pretty sure Schmidt is still using a 97xx series phone. He is a dork, so any things possible. May be a 99xx series. But nothing's pointed to him migrating to BB10. As of 8 weeks ago, he hadn't.

[parthokarki]

Whatever anyone says m nt leaving my z10.

Posted via CB10

[auditman]

With Blackberry re-introducing legacy BB7 thats like a hint. I stil love my z10.

[donemt]

What a bunch of bs. There are plenty of things that separate bb10 from the rest out there. How about bbm voice. How about screen share. And the text messaging is by far the best on the market. Time shift on the camera is also unique. And the fact you can connect your bb10 device to 10 different computers remotely. And access data and files on these 10 different computers. And of course the hub and no silly home button. Everything is faster especially the browser. Who needs apps when you can access bank sites, the real ones, with just two touches. The q is what bb is. As more see the z, they are impressed. But the q is what bb is and those weren't even on sale last qtr aside from a couple of countries that represented about 10% of the entire market. Then you have the q5 which just went on sale last month. Free phone on contract. BB doesn't need to sell a gazillion phones to be very profitable. Lest we forget they were making around a buck per share selling 11-13 million devices in late 2011. They will have 6 phones out, 5 of them bb10 by years end. Average 2 mil sales per qtr of each device and you are back to the 10-12 mil level. Look at apples sales when they started the iphone rollout. They were LOW. Like 1 million the first qtr low. Then they slowly started creeping up and when everyone on the planet owned a couple of shares, the media pump fest began. Look at the recent reaction to ios7. It was lambasted. Iphone is a kids phone. BB10 is for business professionals and males. The short sellers have manipulated this stock to no end. No way this should bave fallen 30% based on the results that came, especially in light of the Venezuela bs. At most a 10% fall. Ahh but they had to take it down to this level to maximize their profits especially on puts. The next move will be to run it up cause you can only make so much down at this level as the current value is a steal considering cash makes up nearly $6 of the current price. So your post was likely written by someone who is short the stock and looking for more sellers to cover. When you have such a high short interest as this stock does, it's not a shocker to see so much bs all over this forum.

And what is with the "Male"? Are you saying that all the women in the workforce and all the women using smartphones are not relevant? My boss ( who is a female) strongly disagrees with you!

medicdon

[msps]

“In Canada, yesterday was the best day ever for the first day of a launch of a new BlackBerry smartphone. In fact, it was more than 50% better than any other launch day in our history in Canada,”

CEO Thorsten Heins said in a statement.

“In the UK, we have seen close to three times our best performance ever for the first week of sales for a BlackBerry smartphone.”

BlackBerry Q10 outselling the Samsung Galaxy S4 in the UK | CrackBerry.com

BlackBerry Q10 outselling the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S4 in France | CrackBerry.com


...and BB10 is coming to all playbooks

[letmein13]

After reading this article, I decide to keep my z10 even if I buy a new phone. If BB went bankrupt, I still have the first touch BB phone.

I can sell it on ebay for 2000 dollars later . It's a good memory to have.

[imz]

“In Canada, yesterday was the best day ever for the first day of a launch of a new BlackBerry smartphone. In fact, it was more than 50% better than any other launch day in our history in Canada,”

CEO Thorsten Heins said in a statement.

“In the UK, we have seen close to three times our best performance ever for the first week of sales for a BlackBerry smartphone.”

BlackBerry Q10 outselling the Samsung Galaxy S4 in the UK | CrackBerry.com

BlackBerry Q10 outselling the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S4 in France | CrackBerry.com


...and BB10 is coming to all playbooks

BB10 outsells Samsung S4
BB10 outsells iPhone5
OS7 outsells BB10

[ErinnM]

HAHA these news folks cream themselves when they can write bad things about BlackBerry. Well they've been saying the end is near for BlackBerry for a long time and continue to look stupid. It's been a few months and I haven't given up on them yet.

Posted via Crackberry Z10

[Dlanod]

Let me first say - I have absolutely no preference over any platform although I do use Android and Windows Phone as my daily phones. I've used over 100 BlackBerry devices over the past 6 years so I've got enough experience in working with and using BlackBerry devices.

This thread piqued my interest for several reasons. From several years experience fixing BlackBerry devices for three mobile networks in the UK (and dealing with irate customers face to face), here's how I see BlackBerry's current predicament:

• BlackBerry's main problem is loyal customers who feel they can no longer trust the Canadian brand
• Failing to deliver BlackBerry 10 last year is a MAJOR problem
• Far too many OS 6 / OS 7 devices developing App Errors and wiping user data
• Confusion over BlackBerry ID and problems with switching SIM cards resulting in lost data
• Failure to innovate (read my explanation below)

These are just 5 reasons that BlackBerry sits where it does now. As for Failure to Innovate:

BlackBerry 10 IS an innovation but ONLY if you are a BlackBerry user. Why do I say that? Simple - the key features of BlackBerry 10 are unique to BlackBerry but (aside from the BlackBerry Hub), they are NOT unique in the industry. BlackBerry's marketing needs to ensure that they get the message across to potential users about the key USPs (Google it if you're not sure what this means) of BlackBerry 10.

To recover their position, BlackBerry need to deliver and deliver quickly. However, personally I do feel that it is too little too late. Why?

There's an age-old adage that It takes 10 positive reviews to counter the effects of 1 negative review. Well with the double major service outage last year, BlackBerry encountered at least 50 million negative reviews. The BlackBerry PlayBook fiasco has added several million more (the outrage of BlackBerry's backtracking is understandable) whilst their decision to offer BBM on rival platforms has actually worked against them - instead of websites, reviewers and journalists recommending BlackBerry devices, they instead recommend waiting for BBM to launch on Android and iOS.

A lot of the failure of BlackBerry 10 is down to their launch earlier this year. Okay so they put the Z10 up for sale the next day - a great move but there was no reason to switch from another OS to the Z10. If you were thinking of picking up a BB10 device, as a full touchscreen user, you would be tempted by the QWERTY keyboard of the Q10. Oh wait, it wasn't available for months. On the subject of the Z10 - great device and unique for BlackBerry users but the first FOUR (yes I had FOUR within two weeks of launch) I got were ALL faulty, whether suffering from lags or randomly crashing and rebooting. The specs were great for BlackBerry users but they were NOTHING SPECIAL to the industry at large.

On the subject of the launch, BlackBerry 10 is actually a great platform but (working in retail at the time and for several months after), BlackBerry completely screwed the launch up. They made two KEY errors by saying that both Skype and WhatsApp would be available at launch. In fact, neither were and I had A LOT of customers reflect this to me when returning their devices.

One of the best features of BlackBerry OS 7 and below was Desktop Manager and being able to switch devices. With BlackBerry Link, you could switch data except it was hit and miss and in the UK (having collated data with several contacts across networks), it RARELY WORKED to transfer contacts. Which pissed people off and resulted in the "Oh Sod this, I'm off to Android/iPhone/Windows Phone".

BlackBerry (and to an extent other manufacturers) need to learn it's not all about the product - the implementation and rollout is CRITICAL. Unfortunately Heins & Co royally messed up the launch by creating false promises (remember, customers have a VERY LONG memory) and delivering a product that didn't get the recognition it deserved simply because there were too many issues.

What do BlackBerry need to do? I don't profess to be an expert (although I've got several years of experience seeing the rise and falls in the industry) but what I would do is:

• BE HONEST to your loyal customers! If you try and pull the wool over the eyes of BlackBerry customers, there may be no customers left.
• Don't release a half-baked product - whether it's software, hardware or OS, DO NOT offer a product unless it's 100% ready.
• Do some testing! - make sure each product is tested THOROUGHLY before you put it on sale - another bad launch and it's only downhill from there

Last point (I swear..) - BlackBerry you need to produce something that has never been seen before. Throwing multiple BlackBerry 10 devices into the market won't help you. Spend as much as possible to research & develop even a single feature that is completely 100% unique. This will help you retain and capture new customers otherwise all you are doing is churning and spinning around on the same spot before you eventually fall over.

There's A LOT I haven't begun to cover in this, including the laziness of BlackBerry in porting Android apps but I'll leave that for another day!

I get that some of you may not agree with my thoughts but the point is that they are MY THOUGHTS. If you agree, wicked thanks. If you don't be constructive and say why (just don't be a troll).

If you got this far... Well done! It was a LOOONG read I know but hopefully you'll have found it useful at least.

Great post. All true. And frankly it's over. BYOD will kill what's left for BlackBerry across the commercial world. I don't think I know anyone who carries a BB anymore for personal use.

[njblackberry]

“In Canada, yesterday was the best day ever for the first day of a launch of a new BlackBerry smartphone. In fact, it was more than 50% better than any other launch day in our history in Canada,”

CEO Thorsten Heins said in a statement.

“In the UK, we have seen close to three times our best performance ever for the first week of sales for a BlackBerry smartphone.”

BlackBerry Q10 outselling the Samsung Galaxy S4 in the UK | CrackBerry.com

BlackBerry Q10 outselling the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S4 in France | CrackBerry.com


...and BB10 is coming to all playbooks

This all is a part of the lost credibility. Statements that were either greatly over stated or totally false. If this was the best performance ever, how bad are the numbers going to be next quarter?

[njblackberry]

BB10 outsells Samsung S4
BB10 outsells iPhone5
OS7 outsells BB10

In what parallel universe does BB10 outsell anything?

Outsell iPhone5? Maybe in some remote village, but not in the real world.

[vgorous]

just give the company more time.

Lol how many more times are you willing to say this? More time? New? It's been in the works for so long. Over a year.

All they did was travel from place to place teaching others about how to develop for their platform. That's good. But while they were doing this, they completely forgot to actually find bugs or improvements that a lot of us ask why the hell didn't they include these features in the first release.

Posted via CB10

[anon(5624621)]

Great post. All true. And frankly it's over. BYOD will kill what's left for BlackBerry across the commercial world. I don't think I know anyone who carries a BB anymore for personal use.

While I think we can all agree that BB is in a tough spot, your post is the availability heuristic at work.

[tstrike34]

Well, that's a great opinion and I agree with that as well, at this time if it's going to be an acquisition, than in all honesty it would Sony, based on their close relationship currently.

I think the future is still grey, one bad quarter isn't enough yet to write them off. Yes things were said and not followed through...companies do this all the time, it's about priorities. they need at least another couple quarters before things hit the fan.

BlackBerry needs to focus on BB10 sales, I personally believe and I'm sure many do the fact that legacy devices outsold BB10 by over double, hurt the company in a big way. They need to focus on BB10 and phase out the legacy for the next quarter...

I also think that the US carriers are playing a big part I'm the fall of BlackBerry.

But this is my opinion, I'm sure everyone here has their own thoughts on the issue.

Posted via CB10

I was having some discussions with some golfing partners who are mid-level telecom execs. Interesting enough in our conversation yesterday, I gathered that BBRY is still paying the price for BIS. Note that I am not being authoritative, its just what I understand from their discussions when I broached the subject (despite the high winds we had yesterday).

The US Carriers are like a cartel to themselves. At one time BBRY was the Godfather, then along came Apple followed by Samsung. The way I understand it, BBRY was very much like Apple in attitude for a while... Now that the shoe is on the other foot and BBRY needs the carriers, old memories may be floating back.

Just what I learned yesterday.

[tstrike34]

NO! ABsolutely and UNdeniably WRONG!! ... BB10 is NOT the failure.

Granted, it hasn't been 'absoutely immaculate' either, but FAR from the source of failure by ANY stretch.

Quite Plainly and Clearly, Frank Boulben AND his - HIS OWN, at that - ENTIRE MARKETING EFF-UP are the failures, here; from uninspired, uninspiring and unfocused MESSAGES, and just simply underwhelming, wrongly targeted and misguided CREATIVE.

He's HAD a FULL year to get it right - and failed miserably - AND (we must expect) is SOLELEY responsible for the Launch and Marketing trainwreck that was and is at the heart of Q1 results AND Q2-4 outlook.

For all we know, there may be other reasons - or individuals - responsible, but Frank is the most visible and blame-assignable fall-guy here and needs to get whacked over this.

The BB10 Launches and subsequent Device/OS Advertising could simply not have been more plainly EFFED-UP and it sickens me that the company keeps NEVER missing the opportunity to shoot itself in the foot on the Marketing Front for the simple short-sighted fact that they insist on hiring engineers, technologists and MBAs - INSTEAD of creative communicators with client insight and empathy - to puch its products and solutions, and rescue - even revive - its public-facing image.

NOT to be misunderstood: this is NOT an affront to those professions or those people at BBRY with those qualifications, but it IS a known that, while "they" are outrageously good at their profession, "Creative, People-Centric Sales Messages and Insights" is generally entirely and hopelessly outside their skill sets (yes, exceptions DO exist; just not in RIM's/BBRY's case).
I have particular personal experience with RIM on this front, and it's the ONE area I keep being proven right on time-and-again. Unfortunately.

Change BOTH (Frank + Marketing approach) and you WILL see the tournaround; unless, of course, 1) no-one's interested in actually bringing the Brand and Company back to real viability, or 2) it's too little too late already.

Finally - oh yes:! I'm Experienced, Product/Platform/Company Knowledgeable, and Market Place Insightful, already in Waterloo, and available 'somewhat quickly.' Most importantly, actually, I'm willing to take this disaster on/over ... AND, I'll be at the AGM. Let's talk.

Great post. You gotta pimp your product if you want your johns to buy. (I hope this doesn't get me banned, it was something funny I was thinking about). *ducks*

[brucep1]

After reading this article, I decide to keep my z10 even if I buy a new phone. If BB went bankrupt, I still have the first touch BB phone.

I can sell it on ebay for 2000 dollars later . It's a good memory to have.

I believe the Z10 is the 3rd or 4th all touch screen phone. 2 storms and a couple of torches thrown in there I think

[kupfernigk]

I was having some discussions with some golfing partners who are mid-level telecom execs. Interesting enough in our conversation yesterday, I gathered that BBRY is still paying the price for BIS. Note that I am not being authoritative, its just what I understand from their discussions when I broached the subject (despite the high winds we had yesterday).

The US Carriers are like a cartel to themselves. At one time BBRY was the Godfather, then along came Apple followed by Samsung. The way I understand it, BBRY was very much like Apple in attitude for a while... Now that the shoe is on the other foot and BBRY needs the carriers, old memories may be floating back.

Just what I learned yesterday.

This is why I think BB should leave the US market except for selling BES 10 as a management tool.
There is enough of the rest of the world to keep a niche phone maker in business. It would be interesting to know how much of the last quarter loss was from US business.

[rickgainsmith]

I hope they go under!

They are a bunch of lying deceiving crooks.

Email in 60 days
Summer
Bb10 for PlayBook
The list goes on.

[Robert Nova Scotia]

Lets get some new ideas from Waterloo University, or any University. We need to build or create something that meets a need. All Blackberry is doing now is leaning on what has already been done i.e. Messaging and touch.
Steve Jobs learned his lesson with NeXT he built a computer and then told people why they needed it. He then realized that you need to fulfill a need to be successful. So come on Blackberry you have the ability and money to be on top again.