[lift]

Being unique isn't always necessarily a good thing.

People like variety. What do you want? Every phone out there to run the same OS? Give me a break. BlackBerry has a following for a reason. Blackberry fans really like the OS and some of the hardware and they buy the phones for that reason. You are talking just like a crowd follower. Blackberry isn't trying to be #1, or #2 or #3. They are just trying to keep their core followers and give them a product that will keep them happy. What about all the mom and pop stores and shops out there. Should they just close-up? Many of these small and unique companies fill a niche and as long as they can stay in business and keep the small amount of customers they have happy, then what's the harm?

[RichardHBB]

Maybe you're right!

There; I edited down to the one part of your post I agree with.

To state it simply: you propose they should have gone Android, and I fail to see how being like everybody else would have helped them regain significant market share. This limits their advantage to engaging in a specs and price war, instead of offering unique features that appeal to a different crowd.

Richard

[Witmen]

There; I edited down to the one part of your post I agree with.

To state it simply: you propose they should have gone Android, and I fail to see how being like everybody else would have helped them regain significant market share. This limits their advantage to engaging in a specs and price war, instead of offering unique features that appeal to a different crowd.

Richard

How is being different working out for them though?

Yeah, that's what I thought. It is easy to say going Android five years ago would have been a bad idea, but that is just a guess. You don't know how it would have worked out for them. Neither do I for that matter, but is clearly evident that building a whole new platform from the ground up wasn't a very good idea. Five years later and where has that new platform gotten them?

Just for reference, on the day they bought QNX, a share of RIMM cost around $70 and BlackBerry had around 40% of the US market share. Back then, BlackBerry was still ahead of Android. There is a chance that they could have been huge in the Android world had they of switched then.

But oh well too late now.

[quizm]

I understand the Leaps attraction to enterprise. Hopefully BlackBerry analysts are not crazy.. it's also true that competition with top phones is never ending. I think that employees will prefer byod with a subsidy to a free second phone which is a Leap. I contend that BlackBerry needs a high end all touch device and it's wasting time getting it out. An employee who really likes his phone is a huge advertiser to those around him, including family.

Posted via CB10

[co4nd]

Hmmmm.......have you compared latest iPhone 6 specs to your Z30 that is not so recent? The one area iPhone wins is ecosystems. No Usb on the go, no Micro Sd card..... I could go on...Have you tried to connect an iPhone to a monitor and use a bluetooth keyboard and mouse transferring files to and from a powered 1TB drive? Good luck.

Why would I want to, that's what my computer is for.

[spacemanspork]

Honestly, you can say Blackberry made only 1 mistake: They were slow to change due to their hubris.

This started with not taking Apple seriously. In some ways that's fine; no one did except Google and that's also why Google is in the best position since they released Android a year later. Next came Palm, then Microsoft, and finally Blackberry. So to get this straight, we had Palm realize they were screwed unless they acted so they did. Microsoft was even slower, but they did it. Blackberry was last amongst the 5 because they kept on telling themselves "we're totally fine!". There were rumors that Microsoft and Palm were working on their new versions really early and it's some major hubris to think those two companies were wasting the money and effort.

You know what else is a great example of BB's hubris? The sad fall of BBM.

BBM was the king. Back in the age of iPhone and Android starting to really dominate, BBM was still something people respected heavily. "Android/iPhone is so much better but I wish I still had BBM. I love BBM."

If Blackberry had started the push into making that cross platform early (even if they gimped the other versions) then it would've cornered the market in phone messaging. Since everyone without it had heard so much about it and everyone with it loved it. But what did Blackberry do? Exact same thing they did with their phone OS. Wait until they're in huge trouble then act, pretending people will flock to them.

They actually waited until Whatsapp dominated the market and about 5 other companies started dominating them too. So basically BBM went from most desired to not desired and then Blackberry decided "ok, now it's time."

If you want to know how bad it is, BBM has like 112 million registered users - sounds good but compare that to 700 million for Whatsapp, 500 million Facebook, 250 million iMessage, 154m Kakao talk, 200m Kik, 580m Line, 300m Skype, 250m Tango, 600m Viber, 468m WeChat.

And that's the problem. A chat program is only as good as its users. I can't get any friends to join BBM because they're already on at least 3 chat programs, so it makes no sense for them to install another just to talk to one user. So BBM will stick around, but it's not going to be joining the top ranks.

I'm not even sure if Blackberry has learned their lesson after what they did with Glympse. Glympse is an awesome app on iOS and Android. Very powerful. What did Blackberry do? They got a deal with Glympse to release a heavily neutered version on BB10. In hopes it'll help make their chat program popular again apparently. Glympse on iOS and Android was great because you could send them to anyone, it didn't matter what type of phone they had as long as they could receive SMS. Blackberry's version, you can only send Glympses to other people with BBM.

That means I went from being able to Glympse everyone I knew when I was on Android to being able to Glympse only 3 people on BB10. Smooth move Blackberry. You seem to think by making Glympse only work with BBM that I'll convince friends to join BBM. Instead, if you ask me, it just annoys people and makes them more likely to leave the platform.

It's actually kind of sad. I bet if Blackberry managed to get a BB10 device out by 2009 and pushed BBM to be cross platform in 2009-2010, they'd be in a very good position now.

[ozdezignr]

Why would I want to, that's what my computer is for.

So you can then pick up your computer and put it in your pocket when you have finished ?

[ozdezignr]

Why would I want to, that's what my computer is for.

...you may also be assuming, incorrectly, that it is MY computer / monitor....

[RichardHBB]

How is being different working out for them though?

Yeah, that's what I thought. It is easy to say going Android five years ago would have been a bad idea, but that is just a guess. You don't know how it would have worked out for them. Neither do I for that matter, but is clearly evident that building a whole new platform from the ground up wasn't a very good idea. Five years later and where has that new platform gotten them?

Just for reference, on the day they bought QNX, a share of RIMM cost around $70 and BlackBerry had around 40% of the US market share. Back then, BlackBerry was still ahead of Android. There is a chance that they could have been huge in the Android world had they of switched then.

But oh well too late now.

The imagined advantage you believe it would have given them would have lasted...how long? Lots of guessing going on here; it's easy to Monday-morning-quarterback when you are at no risk of needing to prove your ideas.

How has being unique worked out for them? They're still here, instead of disappearing completely. It was a gamble that may or may not pay off in the long run, but only time will tell.

Richard

[birdman_38]

Just for reference, on the day they bought QNX, a share of RIMM cost around $70 and BlackBerry had around 40% of the US market share. Back then, BlackBerry was still ahead of Android. There is a chance that they could have been huge in the Android world had they of switched then.

That's what I was just going to mention. There was no urgency for RIM to adopt Android at that time. But had they had some foresight and seen its growth potential as well combined with the threat of the iPhone, they likely would be one of the top Android manufacturers in the world today.

They already had extensive carrier agreements and developer relations in place. That's huge.