[i_plod_an_dr_void]

....other Android makers too!

So how dumb really was it for BB not to attempt an annual licensed OS model for its secure OS after the 3year support window elapsed?
Sure even today, January 2019 the BB10 Passport is still the most secure phone out there compared to even the best hardened and secured BB-Androids and others.

It really is a no Brainer....sure ....not the biggest revenue slice of the pie for BB as in the past ...but keep the phone OS alive for a down the road upgrade as 5g matures maybe - though I suspect something, something (redacted thoughts lol) and bb10 in that area is possible. Customers are smarter today and are getting savyer and are foregoing the thousand bucks and more a year upgrades, when an OS refresh and new battery will do nicely. The Hardware makers will have to come to their senses on this as well. BB10 should be revived. Sure there are those who will tolerate the BB-Google-Android life sucking vampire like never dies data slurping risk until they turn blue (Also heavily done on the desktop these days as well), but there are those who loathe it as well, and currently unable to do much about it (perhaps bb10 is the silver bullet once again). Conversely they don't really like how the ipod-phone works either - I mean, its okay for some of you.

Some of those in that category are willing to hold on to a phone for 3-5 or more years too (as Apple has just suddenly reallized?) Sure former Hardened hardware BB'barians tell me I'm wrong again. Nobody really likes or has good feelings about the transition to the surveillance society anyways....not even the Chinese.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/2/18...ry-replacement

[Ment]

It's the ecosystem. BB10 didn't have one. The pool of buyers willing to pay 800-1K+ USD is shrinking year by year as the smartphone market follows the PC market. It's going to drag down both Samsung and Apple thus the pressing to extract revenue from services.

[johnny_bravo72]

It's now 2019, it's time to stop using BlackBerry 10 devices! https://www.crackberry.com/its-nearl...rry-10-devices

[i_plod_an_dr_void]

Yes with that article I felt like it was 1999 all over again...with the doomsday clock of what happens when y2k occurs....luckily for me when I waited till 2019, I booted my bb10 devices and they still worked fantastically. (ps i have used the top-o-the-line flagship droids...now and then...while some were faster, with better cameras. (and way more expensive)..I still hated the Android OS, so reverted to the QNX based BB10. I must confess I've hated Android since I had been spoiled by the Blackberry Playbook and went from there to a trashy Android tablet (whose manufacturer I won't embarass by naming...who I felt stole my money for such a shabby experience relative to the playbook)) Oh well.

[conite]

So how dumb really was it for BB not to attempt an annual licensed OS model for its secure OS after the 3year support window elapsed?l]

BB10 has been available to licence since 2014. No takers.

If you're talking about an annual subscription fee, you would need to find 100,000 people willing to pay about $10,000/per year.

[Doctornoc]

The Idea sounds similar to the SAF's that BlackBerry had with BB7. However, unlike BB7. Without an ecosystem the idea is Dead. You have to market and advertise the OS to bring customers and developers to it. And this is the primary reason why they failed with BB10 in the first place. Also look at all the executives that left blackberry because of their Management failures.

Posted via CB10

[Troy Tiscareno]

BB10 has been available to licence since 2014

at least January of 2012 - a year before BB10 was even released - when Heins gave several interviews stating that he was seeking licensees because he wasn't convinced that BB could make BB10 happen on their own.

No takers.

Fixed it for you.

Why BlackBerry 10 won't become Open-Sourced (or licensed)

[YesAndNo]

I wIll continue using my BB10 Os Passport SE until it dies, and all my new BB Passport SEs (3), and my Z30 die as well.. The BB10 Os is the best Os there is out there.

[YesAndNo]

It's now 2019, it's time to stop using BlackBerry 10 devices! https://www.crackberry.com/its-nearl...rry-10-devices

Never!

[howarmat]

Even when you start missing calls and cant get a signal? or your email gets a update and you can not longer receive it?

[gruv4u]

Until it outlives it's usefulness, I'll continue to use my...

 AT&T Passport SQW100-3 with vitamin (SR) 10.3.3.2129 (OS version 10.3.3.3204) on AT&T

[Chuck Finley69]

Until it outlives it's usefulness, I'll continue to use my...

 AT&T Passport SQW100-3 with vitamin (SR) 10.3.3.2129 (OS version 10.3.3.3204) on AT&T

Agreed. Unfortunately that happened more than forever ago, over two years ago, for my AT&T Passport. If you rely on AT&T, KEYone is the last and only BBMo carrier device for now.

[johnny_bravo72]

I wIll continue using my BB10 Os Passport SE until it dies, and all my new BB Passport SEs (3), and my Z30 die as well.. The BB10 Os is the best Os there is out there.

Good luck in getting decent replacement batteries for your "new" Passports.

[Chuck Finley69]

Good luck in getting decent replacement batteries for your "new" Passports.

When the networks get refarmed or you get the emergency calls only issue, the device become WiFi only. How much battery life do really need for a phone call, text email machine, that only emails on WiFi? Heck, just leave it plugged in like a laptop running XP without any battery.... good for years....

[EFats]

BB10 has been available to licence since 2014. No takers.

If you're talking about an annual subscription fee, you would need to find 100,000 people willing to pay about $10,000/per year.

I call BS on this number. You keep tossing around huge numbers like this.
There's no way it costs that much to do bug fixes and minor updates. It doesn't even cost that much to do a big update. Especially since part of the cost is amortised on the QNX work.
Don't believe me? Why don't you look at BlackBerry financial which are publicly available? R&D expenditures are around $200-300 million range for the full year the last couple of years. This includes maintaining QNX on many processor architectures, not just ARM, and development of other technologies.

Did Firefox OS cost that much to push out? Do you think Sailfish is burning through that much cash every year? They started with about 3 engineers I think, which sounds about right in my experience. (And yes, I have actually shoehorned custom OS's onto small form factor mobile devices.)

Software as a subscription is a thing, an OS is no different and doesn't have to be exorbitant. Even niche software products get in the game profitably.
The question is whether there will be enough people willing to pay a reasonable price to make it worthwhile. That question was never asked. Given that even past its peak, BlackBerry still had several million users, it's not unreasonable to have seen how many would be willing to sign up.
The other question of course is that the shareholders will ask if that team of engineers allocated to the task would generate better returns deployed on other projects...

[conite]

I call BS on this number. You keep tossing around huge numbers like this.

Except it cost them 5x that the first time around.

[Chuck Finley69]

I call BS on this number. You keep tossing around huge numbers like this.
There's no way it costs that much to do bug fixes and minor updates. It doesn't even cost that much to do a big update. Especially since part of the cost is amortised on the QNX work.
Don't believe me? Why don't you look at BlackBerry financial which are publicly available? R&D expenditures are around $200-300 million range for the full year the last couple of years. This includes maintaining QNX on many processor architectures, not just ARM, and development of other technologies.

Did Firefox OS cost that much to push out? Do you think Sailfish is burning through that much cash every year? They started with about 3 engineers I think, which sounds about right in my experience. (And yes, I have actually shoehorned custom OS's onto small form factor mobile devices.)

Software as a subscription is a thing, an OS is no different and doesn't have to be exorbitant. Even niche software products get in the game profitably.
The question is whether there will be enough people willing to pay a reasonable price to make it worthwhile. That question was never asked. Given that even past its peak, BlackBerry still had several million users, it's not unreasonable to have seen how many would be willing to sign up.
The other question of course is that the shareholders will ask if that team of engineers allocated to the task would generate better returns deployed on other projects...

SAS reminds me a lot of SAF that used to provide BB revenue and profits. I’ve always said the failure of BB with BB10 was the more successful BB10 was the quicker BB would have died as it took away the only real source of revenue and profits in the phone business.

The biggest disadvantage for BBMo today is paying for licensed BBAndroid which is amazing that BB figured out the solution. Through BB licensing, replacing SAF finally got consumers to pay for software through higher device costs.

Had BB gone straight to BBAndroid in 2010, it would have same problem of replacing the BIS revenues. Eventually though, licensing would be the solution. Either way, the problem is nobody would license BB10 and build the hardware. Simple, the cost was too great as BB wants to cover their initial fixed expenses under the licensing up front to justify risk transfer. Before anyone laughs, it’s what forced BB into hardware game initially when nobody wanted to license the original BB software for email devices then it’s first BBOS phones in early 00s.

[Matt J]

There is merit to keeping the BB10 platform secure and updated. With 5G around the corner and the continued development of web browser capabilities and "instant apps", we may be heading into a future when MOST "apps" will not require local installation.

For example, a high-powered BB10 device with the latest mobile browser and a solid 5G connection could easily run 95% of the "apps" people use. Right now, on my KEY2, I could easily use Chrome instead of my installed apps.

Just think how useful a BlackBerry Passport would be with the latest version of Chrome or Firefox?

[Chuck Finley69]

There is merit to keeping the BB10 platform secure and updated. With 5G around the corner and the continued development of web browser capabilities and "instant apps", we may be heading into a future when MOST "apps" will not require local installation.

For example, a high-powered BB10 device with the latest mobile browser and a solid 5G connection could easily run 95% of the "apps" people use. Right now, on my KEY2, I could easily use Chrome instead of my installed apps.

Just think how useful a BlackBerry Passport would be with the latest version of Chrome or Firefox?

What you’re suggesting is not just improbable but impossible since there’s nothing left. BB10 has no hardware or software development capabilities left. In essence, that part of the company was shut down as if BB had indeed gone under.

[thurask]

There is merit to keeping the BB10 platform secure and updated. With 5G around the corner and the continued development of web browser capabilities and "instant apps", we may be heading into a future when MOST "apps" will not require local installation.

For example, a high-powered BB10 device with the latest mobile browser and a solid 5G connection could easily run 95% of the "apps" people use. Right now, on my KEY2, I could easily use Chrome instead of my installed apps.

Just think how useful a BlackBerry Passport would be with the latest version of Chrome or Firefox?

One can't magically retrofit 5G capabilities into 2012-13 SoCs, and the work to move BB10 onto a chip from this half of the decade (before someone jumps in with QNX's CPU support, while there is a pie shell of QNX, the rest of the pie is bespoke BB10) is not worth the expense of attempting to satisfy six people in denial on a forum somewhere.

[Matt J]

What you’re suggesting is not just improbable but impossible since there’s nothing left. BB10 has no hardware or software development capabilities left. In essence, that part of the company was shut down as if BB had indeed gone under.

I agree. However, I think BlackBerry's decision to shut down BB10 development and support was probably short-sighted. The billions that went into BB10 development are now wasted, with the intellectual capital gone. Sometimes it makes sense to keep product lines that are not making money, even costing the company, alive.

When Palm was purchased by HP and then exited the smartphone market, webOS was integrated into smart TVs and now makes up a significant part of the market. WebOS is still being developed for these purposes.

What if in the future, with 5G coming up, apps become redundant and most developers switch to browser-based apps? The incredible speeds of 5G mean that a 100MB "app" could be loaded instantaneously. Even games may be played inside browser windows, and notifications could still come through, just like in a computer.

There would no longer be Android or iOS "apps", just web apps running inside Chrome and Firefox, or some other new browser, etc. The capabilities of browsers are increasing with each update. App developers would have a universal development environment and would not have to make separate apps. A universal platform if you will.

I don't think the future we will have platform-specific apps. This is a very inefficient system and developers would benefit from creating web apps that run on all platforms, including mobile and PC. So every "app" you have on a smartphone will be the exact same "app" you have on your PC.

With "web apps" there will no longer be the need to update them. Every time you open the "app" you have the latest version, across all platforms. When a new "app" comes out, it will be available simultaneously across all platforms. We no longer have to wait for our version to come out. This simplifies the development and support environment substantially.

5G will make this all possible,

[howarmat]

You realize 5g coverage like that is 3-4 years at least away. So by the time it gets to that point then you might as well start from scratch with an OS instead of building off a dead horse

[Matt J]

One can't magically retrofit 5G capabilities into 2012-13 SoCs, and the work to move BB10 onto a chip from this half of the decade (before someone jumps in with QNX's CPU support, while there is a pie shell of QNX, the rest of the pie is bespoke BB10) is not worth the expense of attempting to satisfy six people in denial on a forum somewhere.

No, of course not. This is not what I was suggesting. However if BlackBerry kept a good team on BB10 development to ensure that the OS evolved to modern standards, there may come a time when it could be deployed when "web apps" take the centre stage when 5G rolls out. BB10 then could be adapted to the latest hardware and be licensed to hardware manufacturers or BlackBerry could get back into the hardware game.

Bottom line... if "apps" die, and are replaced with "web apps", the OS becomes a preference.

For example, is all "apps" were available on all platforms, Android, iOS, BB10, Windows 10 Mobile, and functioned exactly the same, then consumers would choose the OS that they felt was best for them.

I'm just guessing, but if you gave 100 people the option to try BB10, Android and iOS with all apps available on all devices, I'm sure that more than 1% of those would choose BB10. You might even get an even split among the three options.

It was the lack of apps that did BB10 in. What if that hurdle was no longer relevant?

[thurask]

It was the lack of apps that did BB10 in. What if that hurdle was no longer relevant?

If the hurdle was no longer relevant concurrent with the OS being relevant, sure. But now, it's just a colossal money pit that BB Ltd is filling in with concrete come 2020.

[conite]

However, I think BlackBerry's decision to shut down BB10 development and support was probably short-sighted. The billions that went into BB10 development are now wasted, with the intellectual capital gone. Sometimes it makes sense to keep product lines that are not making money, even costing the company, alive.

https://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/03...-cost-fallacy/