[Doctornoc]

They were fired or resigned years ago. Current management did a better job keeping BB alive from bankruptcy to keep supporting BBOS and BIS. Unfortunately BB10 was the money pit that should have never been created. Should have kept BBOS and BIS going like they have now, and just added BBAndroid. If BB had done that, you might see BB as possible top 5 Android player.
Even that is probably past tense since other major Android OEMs have since fallen.

BB10 would have made money if Blackberry brought over all of the services and ecosystem from BBOS and gave the option for BIS. And blackberry should have advertised better instead of relying on word of mouth

Posted via CB10

[Chuck Finley69]

BB10 would have made money if Blackberry brought over all of the services and ecosystem from BBOS and gave the option for BIS. And blackberry should have advertised better instead of relying on word of mouth

Posted via CB10

At release of BB10, I expected BIS service and data plus all the other features and benefits of BBOS. I was very disappointed to see it all missing. I also expected to see an ecosystem competitive with Android. I was VERY disappointed since not many of the commercial apps being used in my profession were available like for Android/IOS. Those companies had NO interest supporting a third/fourth OS.

What I didn't understand at BB10 rollout was the carrier pressures that were against BB. The carriers didn't support BIS type services because it took money from carrier and paid it to BB every month. It allowed for lower data consumption because of data compression. What carrier wants less revenue and/or less data consumption?

BB had a flawed business model and was doomed for extinction when Android/IOS rolled out hardware that encouraged data consumption and increased data revenue that stayed completely with the carriers. Being a proponent for the betterment for consumers privacy, expenses and simplicity was noble but flawed.

BB was guilty of hubris. Deciding what customers wanted for them, instead of letting customers decide what they wanted for themselves and would pay for.

[Emaderton3]

I also thought BIS was not necessary nor beneficial once 3G rolled out.

[Chuck Finley69]

I also thought BIS was not necessary nor beneficial once 3G rolled out.

Unless you're BB at which point BIS was always beneficial to revenue and profits. Separate point but that's why I believe the Storm was dumped in Verizon's lap as it was to expand BIS dependency and buy time. It was a last time revenue grab attempt to milk things long as possible and fight to keep BIS revenues.

[DonHB]

BB had a flawed business model and was doomed for extinction when Android/IOS rolled out hardware that encouraged data consumption and increased data revenue that stayed completely with the carriers. Being a proponent for the betterment for consumers privacy, expenses and simplicity was noble but flawed.

BB was guilty of hubris. Deciding what customers wanted for them, instead of letting customers decide what they wanted for themselves and would pay for.

I don't think it was a flawed business model, but BB misunderstood its position in the marketplace or was "hubris" as you said.

They missed the opportunity to use the Android API and runtime as an offensive measure while using Flow on Neutrino to distinguish BB10 from Google's Android. This would have minimized the investment developers would have required to support the platform. And by not becoming a licensee of Google Services BlackBerry would have, as has been suggested, the freedom to create a native API later and independently evolve Android. Bias against Java apparently made Blackberry abandon this idea in the early stages of BB10 development.

When John Chen became CEO it was when Dalvik was still being used and ART was a technology Preview. It was also before Google Services was widely used and the non-Flow supporting Android Player was not too far behind the then current Android release. The CEO missed the opportunity to replace Cascades with a Flow supporting Android API as the BB10 SDK. This second missed opportunity was a huge loss because Google Services were not yet widely used.

[conite]

I don't think it was a flawed business model, but BB misunderstood its position in the marketplace or was "hubris" as you said.

They missed the opportunity to use the Android API and runtime as an offensive measure while using Flow on Neutrino to distinguish BB10 from Google's Android. This would have minimized the investment developers would have required to support the platform. And by not becoming a licensee of Google Services BlackBerry would have, as has been suggested, the freedom to create a native API later and independently evolve Android. Bias against Java apparently made Blackberry abandon this idea in the early stages of BB10 development.

When John Chen became CEO it was when Dalvik was still being used and ART was a technology Preview. It was also before Google Services was widely used and the non-Flow supporting Android Player was not too far behind the then current Android release. The CEO missed the opportunity to replace Cascades with a Flow supporting Android API as the BB10 SDK. This second missed opportunity was a huge loss because Google Services were not yet widely used.

Amazon invested billions of dollars on Fire OS, services, and devices. Where did that get them without Google Play Services?

It required absolutely no developer tweaking whatsoever, as it was a 100% compatible Android solution. Yet the Amazon Appstore Is a wasteland of abandoned apps.

[bb10adopter111]

Amazon invested billions of dollars on Fire OS, services, and devices. Where did that get them without Google Play Services?

It required absolutely no developer tweaking whatsoever, as it was a 100% compatible Android solution. Yet the Amazon Appstore Is a wasteland of abandoned apps.

As someone who doesn't want or value third party mobile apps at all, this makes perfect sense. If people want apps, then Apple and Google offer sufficient choice. If they don't want apps, then a BB10 stock phone should be sufficient.

BB10's business model of trying to catch up to Apple and Google with their own app store was naive and hopeless. They would have been better off offering BB10 as a "third way" alternative to Apple and Google, and kept a laser focus on secure, privacy-oriented devices with limited app availability.

That would have limited their ceiling to a few points of market share, but at least it would have provided a sustainable differentiated advantage.

Of course, that might well also have failed, but it wouldn't have required such a huge bet with the virtual assurance of failure that the strategy they chose did!

Posted with my trusty Z10

[conite]

As someone who doesn't want or value third party mobile apps at all, this makes perfect sense. If people want apps, then Apple and Google offer sufficient choice. If they don't want apps, then a BB10 stock phone should be sufficient.

BB10's business model of trying to catch up to Apple and Google with their own app store was naive and hopeless. They would have been better off offering BB10 as a "third way" alternative to Apple and Google, and kept a laser focus on secure, privacy-oriented devices with limited app availability.

That would have limited their ceiling to a few points of market share, but at least it would have provided a sustainable differentiated advantage.

Of course, that might well also have failed, but it wouldn't have required such a huge bet with the virtual assurance of failure that the strategy they chose did!

Posted with my trusty Z10

My point was to once again refute @DonHB's old refrain "They missed the opportunity to use the Android API and runtime as an offensive measure while using Flow on Neutrino to distinguish BB10 from Google's Android. This would have minimized the investment developers would have required to support the platform."

[bb10adopter111]

My point was to once again refute @DonHB's old refrain "They missed the opportunity to use the Android API and runtime as an offensive measure while using Flow on Neutrino to distinguish BB10 from Google's Android. This would have minimized the investment developers would have required to support the platform."

Yes. I was agreeing with you and extending the point that it makes no sense to have an unofficial Android platform with an alternative app store. The official app stores offer more choices with more security and support.

If Amazon and Google couldn't succeed with their "me too" app stores, it's pretty intuitive that BlackBerry's was also doomed.
Posted with my trusty Z10

[Chuck Finley69]

I don't think it was a flawed business model, but BB misunderstood its position in the marketplace or was "hubris" as you said.

They missed the opportunity to use the Android API and runtime as an offensive measure while using Flow on Neutrino to distinguish BB10 from Google's Android. This would have minimized the investment developers would have required to support the platform. And by not becoming a licensee of Google Services BlackBerry would have, as has been suggested, the freedom to create a native API later and independently evolve Android. Bias against Java apparently made Blackberry abandon this idea in the early stages of BB10 development.

When John Chen became CEO it was when Dalvik was still being used and ART was a technology Preview. It was also before Google Services was widely used and the non-Flow supporting Android Player was not too far behind the then current Android release. The CEO missed the opportunity to replace Cascades with a Flow supporting Android API as the BB10 SDK. This second missed opportunity was a huge loss because Google Services were not yet widely used.

The entire point is NO REVENUE because the carriers didn't want to share with BB ANYMORE. The carriers wanted Android/IOS because it gave them 100% data revenue and increased data usage. The Android/IOS model WON because it had the support of everyone from CARRIERS to CONSUMERS.

[howarmat]

BIS had its day in the sun. It was the only way to get push email at the time. Email systems evolved though and BIS was becoming a hindrance. Soon everyone could get push mail on their devices and there were no "truncations" and full html in all glory. The data compression benefits worked well for the aging browser on the BBOS but again in the new word of webkit and such browsers were able to do more.

BIS made RIM rich back in the day but when the world pivoted to more advanced systems RIM did move fast enough and here were are today. BBRY is out of the device business. They did pivot eventually, to a completely new revenue stream of Enterprise Software services and they seems to be doing well in arena but there is no way they should ever step back into the mobile device/OS game that almost wiped the company out. Leave that to BBM/TCL

[joeldf]

Amazon invested billions of dollars on Fire OS, services, and devices. Where did that get them without Google Play Services?

It required absolutely no developer tweaking whatsoever, as it was a 100% compatible Android solution. Yet the Amazon Appstore Is a wasteland of abandoned apps.

While the Amazon phone failed, their tablets are still going strong. We bought two of them this past Christmas. One for my 8-year-old (he can now give up my old Z10), and one for my wife.

They are geared for media consumption, pure and simple. Besides Amazon's own offerings, you can get Netflix, Hulu and many other apps that expand on that use from the app store and that seems plenty enough for its intended use.

Yes, many of the other apps that are left are old ones that haven't been updated in years.

What's more, adding Google Play Services and the Play Store to the thing is much easier than it is to add to a BB10 phone. And, no app patching needed.

Full disclosure: I haven't tried to add Google Play Services and Store to the thing yet, but I've looked into it and may try if my wife let's me .

Of course, I don't know how a variation of that would have worked for BB10 at the start. They tried to be too much for everyone and ended up alienating everyone.

[markmall]

Yes. I was agreeing with you and extending the point that it makes no sense to have an unofficial Android platform with an alternative app store. The official app stores offer more choices with more security and support.

If Amazon and Google couldn't succeed with their "me too" app stores, it's pretty intuitive that BlackBerry's was also doomed.
Posted with my trusty Z10

You mean BlackBerry should not have had any app store? I could understand BlackBerry being up front that certain apps would not be available and it was not a social media device, but why no app store for things like podcast managers etc.?

Posted via CB10

[bb10adopter111]

You mean BlackBerry should not have had any app store? I could understand BlackBerry being up front that certain apps would not be available and it was not a social media device, but why no app store for things like podcast managers etc.?

Posted via CB10

I'm not saying they shouldn't have had any kind of app store at all. I'm just saying that app availability was never going to be adequate for people who wanted an app platform equivalent to what Google or Apple could offer.

It's all hindsight in any case (and I don't actually think they had any viable path that would have satisfied investor expectations to share in the growth of smartphones as consumer devices.) But I think they would have been better off to present themselves as an alternative to the app-based model.

Posted with my trusty Z10

[Troy Tiscareno]

It's all hindsight in any case (and I don't actually think they had any viable path that would have satisfied investor expectations to share in the growth of smartphones as consumer devices.) But I think they would have been better off to present themselves as an alternative to the app-based model.

The problem is that there weren't nearly enough users who "didn't need any apps" to sustain BB10. The cost of development for a platform is well over $1B/year, and you need to be able to make a profit on top of that, and that means you need to be able to spread those costs across a LOT of devices, or you'll either take a loss on every device (which is what BB did, and nearly went bankrupt) or you'll price yourself out of the market and go bankrupt. Chen's figure for BB10 to BREAK EVEN was 10 million devices a year - and their best year they barely sold half that. The numbers just weren't there, and without volume, failure is the only outcome.

A lot of people vastly underestimate the costs of making something as complex as a smartphone platform - partly because they see all these Android OEMs making cheap phones and "forget" that Google is GIVING them a platform for free (that Google invests nearly $2B a year on, year after year).

Samsung HATES the fact that they don't control the OS on their smartphones, and would LOVE to dump Android, but their own experiments with alternative OSs (and there have been several) have taught them that even they don't have what it takes to compete against Android. Neither did Microsoft. BB certainly never had a chance.

[bb10adopter111]

The problem is that there weren't nearly enough users who "didn't need any apps" to sustain BB10. The cost of development for a platform is well over $1B/year, and you need to be able to make a profit on top of that, and that means you need to be able to spread those costs across a LOT of devices, or you'll either take a loss on every device (which is what BB did, and nearly went bankrupt) or you'll price yourself out of the market and go bankrupt. Chen's figure for BB10 to BREAK EVEN was 10 million devices a year - and their best year they barely sold half that. The numbers just weren't there, and without volume, failure is the only outcome.

A lot of people vastly underestimate the costs of making something as complex as a smartphone platform - partly because they see all these Android OEMs making cheap phones and "forget" that Google is GIVING them a platform for free (that Google invests nearly $2B a year on, year after year).

Samsung HATES the fact that they don't control the OS on their smartphones, and would LOVE to dump Android, but their own experiments with alternative OSs (and there have been several) have taught them that even they don't have what it takes to compete against Android. Neither did Microsoft. BB certainly never had a chance.

I agree that the business model is the problem. The addressable market was limited, and they would have had to develop a very different model from Samsung and the other Android OEMs that could generate an ongoing revenue stream like BIS without major revenue from an App Store. It would have had to based on stable robust hardware and subscription services rather than selling a new phone every two years.

So, the unanswerable question is, if you rolled the clock back to 2010 (after the iPhone and Android were established, but while BlackBerry was still growing), could BlackBerry have rolled out a subscription-based service with 10M+ people worldwide paying $10+ a month for a vertically integrated solution that presented a completely different vision of mobile devices, one not based on the apps that consumers wanted so much? And would that have been sustainable, or would too many people have simply drafted away to the consumer-oriented platforms without the app stores anyway?

I know it's what many around these forums (including me) might have preferred. I would happily pay $400-$500 every three to five years plus $200 a year in subscription revenue for a service that is, essentially BB10 supported with a handful of essential apps such as a Web browser.

In sum, a phone that is unapologetically for the traditional BlackBerry users whose work is primarily PC-based, with no thought of appealing to the broader market of mobile users.

BlackBerry investors would never have accepted such a limited vision for their company, which is why they tried for the high risk, high reward BB10 vision they did.



Posted with my trusty Z10

[markmall]

I agree that the business model is the problem. The addressable market was limited, and they would have had to develop a very different model from Samsung and the other Android OEMs that could generate an ongoing revenue stream like BIS without major revenue from an App Store. It would have had to based on stable robust hardware and subscription services rather than selling a new phone every two years.

So, the unanswerable question is, if you rolled the clock back to 2010 (after the iPhone and Android were established, but while BlackBerry was still growing), could BlackBerry have rolled out a subscription-based service with 10M+ people worldwide paying $10+ a month for a vertically integrated solution that presented a completely different vision of mobile devices, one not based on the apps that consumers wanted so much? And would that have been sustainable, or would too many people have simply drafted away to the consumer-oriented platforms without the app stores anyway?

I know it's what many around these forums (including me) might have preferred. I would happily pay $400-$500 every three to five years plus $200 a year in subscription revenue for a service that is, essentially BB10 supported with a handful of essential apps such as a Web browser.

In sum, a phone that is unapologetically for the traditional BlackBerry users whose work is primarily PC-based, with no thought of appealing to the broader market of mobile users.

BlackBerry investors would never have accepted such a limited vision for their company, which is why they tried for the high risk, high reward BB10 vision they did.



Posted with my trusty Z10

I disagree that this would be a problem for investors. They should prefer to continue the core business than be wandering in the wilderness. The question I think is if a sufficient market existed if the billions using smartphones knew about BB10 devices. I won’t repeat what we already have argued. I have my opinion. Please no one tell me how your opinion is more authoritative because you are a programmer, etc.

Posted via CB10

[conite]

I disagree that this would be a problem for investors. They should prefer to continue the core business than be wandering in the wilderness. The question I think is if a sufficient market existed if the billions using smartphones knew about BB10 devices. I won’t repeat what we already have argued. I have my opinion. Please no one tell me how your opinion is more authoritative because you are a programmer, etc.

Posted via CB10

Where are these customers?

They didn't pick up Windows, Fire, Sailfish, or Tizen either with huge initiatives behind them. Why BB10?

[Chuck Finley69]

I disagree that this would be a problem for investors. They should prefer to continue the core business than be wandering in the wilderness. The question I think is if a sufficient market existed if the billions using smartphones knew about BB10 devices. I won’t repeat what we already have argued. I have my opinion. Please no one tell me how your opinion is more authoritative because you are a programmer, etc.

Posted via CB10

For BB10 to be viable, it would have needed to generate the same kind of monthly revenue as BIS did. Since carriers wouldn't support this, under what type of add-on would you consider that 5 million customers would pay $5/month to just maintain BB10. That would only generate $300 million per year. That's how cheap BIS got and it still generates more revenue than BB10 ever did as software.

Even if every user of BBOS in 2012 moved to BB10 at 2013 intro, each customer stopped paying $60/year minimum to BB. How would marketing help the problem? Like Android now, people don't pay the extra money every month.

Everybody wants to hear your opinion too on how they would specifically generate the revenue to stay the core business. The BB10 you describe is BBOS without the revenue.

[Nguyen1]

I have the amazon fire phone. I put google play on it. Worked just fine. Once you shut off the power-draining 3d perspective thing and some gestures, the phone worked just as well as the top phones of its day. Memory wasn't expandable though. However, if you liked Amazon, the phone was heavily integrated into the amazon ecosytem and STILL remains faster to use those services, such as amazon prime videos, than do today's current phones. You can even use Alexa on the fire phone, which is BY FAR my favorite "Android" phone.

That said, if a juggernaut like Amazon can't make its ecosytem succed on its own phone, what chance did BB have?

[DonHB]

I'm not saying they shouldn't have had any kind of app store at all. I'm just saying that app availability was never going to be adequate for people who wanted an app platform equivalent to what Google or Apple could offer.

It's all hindsight in any case (and I don't actually think they had any viable path that would have satisfied investor expectations to share in the growth of smartphones as consumer devices.) But I think they would have been better off to present themselves as an alternative to the app-based model.

Posted with my trusty Z10

What you are not considering is what the Play Services situation was in 2013 when the current CEO was instated. Now it is even more interesting question since BlackBerry doesn't have to sustain handset inventory. They can let their licensees do it.

[DonHB]

That said, if a juggernaut like Amazon can't make its ecosytem succed on its own phone, what chance did BB have?

The Fire Phone got mediocre (app availability was not considered) reviews while its other devices have fared well before and after the phone's introduction.

[DonHB]

BB10's business model of trying to catch up to Apple and Google with their own app store was naive and hopeless. They would have been better off offering BB10 as a "third way" alternative to Apple and Google, and kept a laser focus on secure, privacy-oriented devices with limited app availability.

That would have limited their ceiling to a few points of market share, but at least it would have provided a sustainable differentiated advantage.

Of course, that might well also have failed, but it wouldn't have required such a huge bet with the virtual assurance of failure that the strategy they chose did!

Posted with my trusty Z10

Considering where Google Services was in the marketplace when John Chen joined BlackBerry, switching to an Android API and focusing on "secure, privacy-oriented devices" may have appeared more agreeable to developers in 2013. Now, the laser focus is the only conceivable way to begin with a software only strategy.

[Trouveur]

What you are not considering is what the Play Services situation was in 2013 when the current CEO was instated. Now it is even more interesting question since BlackBerry doesn't have to sustain handset inventory. They can let their licensees do it.

Their licensees want BlackBerry name and secure Android, they don't want BB10.


Posted via CB10

[conite]

Considering where Google Services was in the marketplace when John Chen joined BlackBerry, switching to an Android API and focusing on "secure, privacy-oriented devices" may have appeared more agreeable to developers in 2013. Now, the laser focus is the only conceivable way to begin with a software only strategy.

Developers didn't take TWO minutes to port their existing, unmodified, working apps to BB10! They had NO interest in a third ecosystem. They had NO interest in Microsoft, Tizen, Fire, Sailfish, etc, etc, etc, etc. Nor did consumers.