1. app_Developer's Avatar

    OK, now the argument that BlackBerry "did not have the funds..." Funds for what? To update BB10 more? To release a new flagship touchscreen device? How much do you think they needed to do this? They had plenty of cash after Prem Watsa's cash infusion. They had so much cash that they went on an acquisition spree.
    Buying a company with existing book for, say, $500M is a much safer bet than committing the same $500M to get Jabil or whomever to make 2 million phones. Plus whatever you have to commit to Qualcomm to get your hands on the latest SoC's and what you have to spend on ads and development and all the rest.


    I don't blame Chen for bb10's failure. I blame him (and the board/Watsa) for not believing in their products and not having any marketing savvy so that bb10 had a chance after it matured.
    I think you've summed it up exactly. The Board had no real confidence in BB10. They didn't want the bottom to drop out of revenue, and they had significant outstanding purchase commitments that they had to burn down anyway. So they did what they needed to do to keep up appearances on the phone side and burn down commitment, while they worked to ramp up what they see as the real future.
    Troy Tiscareno likes this.
    01-20-17 03:38 PM
  2. markmall's Avatar
    How much was invested in marketing? I remember they had Passport stock issues around launch but I don't remember it being a months long issue, do you have a source for that?
    It was months long. I remember discussing it on this website -- I believe on the bbry forum. I said that it was clear it was not an intentional sellout for promo purposes to be quickly replenished because it went on too long. It was a terrible blunder.

    Here is a quote from Nov 2014 from Crackberry (although not months after release but many weeks):

    "I have been to the Eaton Centre in Toronto (Rogers and Bell stores) and neither one of them had any Passports. In fact the Bell representative said that they can't even get a demo unit and have been unable to get any phones for sale. This is the highest grossing Bell store in Canada. The Rogers store people said that they received 5 units a launch day and have not received any more units since. The same was true at the mall on King Street in Waterloo, the cradle of BlackBerry.

    This just doesn't make any sense. As a shareholder I am upset that BlackBerry cannot even make this new flagship phone avalanche in its home market.

    An explanation from BlackBerry would be warranted."




    Posted via CB10
    01-20-17 03:44 PM
  3. markmall's Avatar
    BB10 didn't have a chance in 2013, 2011, or let alone in 2014 when it "matured".
    Not everyone agrees with you so rather than state conclusions, state your reasoning.

    Posted via CB10
    01-20-17 03:44 PM
  4. markmall's Avatar
    Buying a company with existing book for, say, $500M is a much safer bet than committing the same $500M to get Jabil or whomever to make 2 million phones. Plus whatever you have to commit to Qualcomm to get your hands on the latest SoC's and what you have to spend on ads and development and all the rest.



    I think you've summed it up exactly. The Board had no real confidence in BB10. They didn't want the bottom to drop out of revenue, and they had significant outstanding purchase commitments that they had to burn down anyway. So they did what they needed to do to keep up appearances on the phone side and burn down commitment, while they worked to ramp up what they see as the real future.
    No, they continued BB10 but were half_ssed about it. Karate, yes or karate, no.

    Posted via CB10
    01-20-17 03:46 PM
  5. Nguyen1's Avatar
    Squished like grape!

    The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
    Troy Tiscareno likes this.
    01-20-17 03:52 PM
  6. app_Developer's Avatar
    No, they continued BB10 but were half_ssed about it. Karate, yes or karate, no.
    I'm agreeing that they were half-assed about it. Of course they were. The other option would have been to just settle the outstanding purchase commitments and let revenue dip harder than it did. Instead, they kept the phone business warm (sort of) for as long as they could while they went about building their new business.
    Troy Tiscareno likes this.
    01-20-17 03:52 PM
  7. markmall's Avatar
    I'm agreeing that they were half-assed about it. Of course they were. The other option would have been to just settle the outstanding purchase commitments and let revenue dip harder than it did. Instead, they kept the phone business warm (sort of) for as long as they could while they went about building their new business.
    No, they also developed new phones including the Classic. I was a shareholder back then and watched Chen's interviews and the company's moves. The idea that all of these phones' development predates Chen is sheer invention.

    Posted via CB10
    01-20-17 04:00 PM
  8. tre10's Avatar
    No, they continued BB10 but were half_ssed about it. Karate, yes or karate, no.

    Posted via CB10
    I agree with you here as well. They didn't want to spend on BB10 but still threw stuff out hoping something might stick. Then on top of that they wanted to do it cheaply. I don't think it's possible to launch a phone (or a mobile platform for that matter) cheaply. They were trying to complete existing contracts while spending as little as they possibly could. They basically ran around like chickens without heads after Plan A didn't work.
    01-20-17 04:01 PM
  9. app_Developer's Avatar
    No, they also developed new phones including the Classic. I was a shareholder back then and watched Chen's interviews and the company's moves. The idea that all of these phones' development predates Chen is sheer invention.
    I was a shareholder then and was long before that and still am today. I don't know why you keep saying "no", when we are both saying the same things.

    I didn't say that the Classic predated Chen, did I? What I said is they did the minimum things they needed to do to keep up appearances on that side of the business and to burn down the purchase commitments that had been made before Chen. You can look at the quarterly's over the past 3 years and you can track how he's burning that down.

    But they did all of that without risking any significant new money. The new money (from Watsa) went largely towards safer investments like Good which fit their strategy. They didn't spend that money on big advertising campaigns or big new commitments for high end devices.

    Heins said that he bet the company on BB10. He did, and it ended with the company for sale.

    On the one hand, Chen was not going to repeat that mistake. OTOH, he couldn't just shut down phones and pay off the commitments, so he chose the middle ground. Do a little on phones, but not too much, and keep what you can going for a while until finally the software money starts coming in.
    conite likes this.
    01-20-17 04:07 PM
  10. conite's Avatar
    No, they also developed new phones including the Classic. I was a shareholder back then and watched Chen's interviews and the company's moves. The idea that all of these phones' development predates Chen is sheer invention.

    Posted via CB10
    You forget that BlackBerry was sitting on a mountain of Qualcomm S4 SoCs.
    anon(9803228) likes this.
    01-20-17 04:28 PM
  11. markmall's Avatar
    I was a shareholder then and was long before that and still am today. I don't know why you keep saying "no", when we are both saying the same things.

    I didn't say that the Classic predated Chen, did I? What I said is they did the minimum things they needed to do to keep up appearances on that side of the business and to burn down the purchase commitments that had been made before Chen. You can look at the quarterly's over the past 3 years and you can track how he's burning that down.

    But they did all of that without risking any significant new money. The new money (from Watsa) went largely towards safer investments like Good which fit their strategy. They didn't spend that money on big advertising campaigns or big new commitments for high end devices.

    Heins said that he bet the company on BB10. He did, and it ended with the company for sale.

    On the one hand, Chen was not going to repeat that mistake. OTOH, he couldn't just shut down phones and pay off the commitments, so he chose the middle ground. Do a little on phones, but not too much, and keep what you can going for a while until finally the software money starts coming in.
    We don't agree on Blackberry's intent. You and Conite believe that Blackberry intended to fail and was only following through on their "commitments" to purchase something... Which is why they did their horrible launches of BB10 phones well over a year after Chen joined the company.

    I don't buy this planned retreat theory. I believe that Blackberry did not know they were going to fail with these releases and even had high hopes for them. They had no idea what was going to happen. It's hard to tell even without spending money on marketing.

    Was Blackberry's release of the Priv that much different than their release of the Passport in terms of marketing efforts? Did Chen also know that the Priv was going to fail?

    After looking at a couple of old Chen interviews today, I really don't think they knew they were going to go Android until well after Chen came on.
    elfabio80 likes this.
    01-20-17 09:47 PM
  12. markmall's Avatar
    You forget that BlackBerry was sitting on a mountain of Qualcomm S4 SoCs.
    No, I don't remember this.
    01-20-17 09:49 PM
  13. conite's Avatar
    You and Conite believe that Blackberry intended to fail.
    They didn't intend to fail - they had already accomplished that by the summer of 2013.

    Again, this was a managed retreat, which also served to eat through their Qualcomm SoCs.
    01-20-17 09:54 PM
  14. johnny_bravo72's Avatar
    No, I don't remember this.
    Selective memory.
    01-21-17 01:01 AM
  15. Bbnivende's Avatar
    Buying a company with existing book for, say, $500M is a much safer bet than committing the same $500M to get Jabil or whomever to make 2 million phones. Plus whatever you have to commit to Qualcomm to get your hands on the latest SoC's and what you have to spend on ads and development and all the rest.



    I think you've summed it up exactly. The Board had no real confidence in BB10. They didn't want the bottom to drop out of revenue, and they had significant outstanding purchase commitments that they had to burn down anyway. So they did what they needed to do to keep up appearances on the phone side and burn down commitment, while they worked to ramp up what they see as the real future.
    When does stringing customers along , managed retreats, and keeping up appearances slip over into lying? At the very least BlackBerry made misleading statements or culpable omissions.

    Posted via CB10
    01-21-17 01:40 AM
  16. Soulstream's Avatar
    No, I don't remember this.
    They used S4 chips in every BB10 phone except the Passport. They even used them in the classic and the leap and by that time the S4 chips were not even in production anymore, so of course BB had a stock of them.

    They had so many of them because they really believen they were gonna sell more Z10/Z30/Q10/Q5 phones when BB10 launched. Of course that proved to be a complete failure so they were left with the stock. They had to use them somehow.
    01-21-17 03:20 AM
  17. Kot Prada's Avatar
    BB10 is never going to be improved. They have stopped developing it. Enjoy the Android. I find the OS to be much better than BB10 and more customizable too. Plus all your apps are going to work.
    Is that a joke?! Android will never be better than BB10.

    That's the problem: there's no equal substitution for BB10 on market.
    Last edited by Kot Prada; 01-22-17 at 07:16 AM.
    01-21-17 07:03 AM
  18. Soulstream's Avatar
    Is that a joke?! Android will better be better than BB10.

    That's the problem: there's no equal substitution for BB10 on market.
    there's no equal substitution for BB10 on market FOR YOU.
    anon(9803228) likes this.
    01-21-17 08:19 AM
  19. Emaderton3's Avatar
    While Android may not work for everyone, it will continue to evolve with further development while BlackBerry 10 will remain static. I would imagine that more and more settings, options, functions, etc will eventually find their way on to Android and appeal to more and more potential users.

    Posted via CB10
    app_Developer likes this.
    01-21-17 08:28 AM
  20. TiFr3d's Avatar
    Don't misunderstand me... I do not claim to know what is a good commercial smartphone, I just said that at the end of the day/week i do not use almost 90% of apps in my phone which mostly serves me to sort out and answer email, text message or call. So when choosing a phone I must consider this part first and not game, GPS... So i claim that BB10 was great for me apart the GTD system which is not cross platform. Syncing exchange email due date / category with remember would have done the job, but that's not the case.
    My (but not THE) perfect phone is a 72H battery phone with something like IQtell built-in, and a decent camera to scan document or board. That's all.
    Kot Prada likes this.
    01-21-17 12:41 PM
  21. markmall's Avatar
    They used S4 chips in every BB10 phone except the Passport. They even used them in the classic and the leap and by that time the S4 chips were not even in production anymore, so of course BB had a stock of them.

    They had so many of them because they really believen they were gonna sell more Z10/Z30/Q10/Q5 phones when BB10 launched. Of course that proved to be a complete failure so they were left with the stock. They had to use them somehow.
    This is your speculation that they were sitting on a load of parts they had to get rid of. You guys don't realize how much you speculate. Maybe it was cheaper to build new devices based on the same chip because it involved less work and troubleshooting. Maybe distributors or third parties or Samsung had remaining stock. Do companies usually warehouse component parts like SoC's years before they know they are going to use them to assemble a phone?

    It's possible but you would need direct evidence of this before it should be stated as fact as people here are doing.
    01-21-17 02:35 PM
  22. Soulstream's Avatar
    This is your speculation that they were sitting on a load of parts they had to get rid of. You guys don't realize how much you speculate. Maybe it was cheaper to build new devices based on the same chip because it involved less work and troubleshooting. Maybe distributors or third parties or Samsung had remaining stock. Do companies usually warehouse component parts like SoC's years before they know they are going to use them to assemble a phone?

    It's possible but you would need direct evidence of this before it should be stated as fact as people here are doing.
    Even if that was not true,it still shows they didn't really want to invest much resources into BB10.

    The Leap for example, was released in 2015 and as far as I can find is the only new midrange device still using such an old SoC. It has been stated that driver for BB10 for newer SoC would cost a lot of money. So for the Leap, BB had 3 posibilities:
    1. use the S4
    2. use the 801 that was on the Passport (but in 2015, the 801 was a top end SoC and would raise the price of the Leap too much)
    3. pay for drivers for another SoC

    However you look at it they took the path that cost them less. That's how committed they were (and are) to BB10: minimal money investment into BB10.
    01-21-17 03:01 PM
  23. conite's Avatar
    This is your speculation that they were sitting on a load of parts they had to get rid of.
    This is a well known fact, and has been confirmed by people inside BlackBerry over the years.

    They expected to sell 10-20 million Z10 and Q10 devices in the first year alone, so made a big bulk order of components around the S4 SoC.
    01-21-17 03:38 PM
  24. markmall's Avatar
    This is a well known fact, and has been confirmed by people inside BlackBerry over the years.

    They expected to sell 10-20 million Z10 and Q10 devices in the first year alone, so made a big bulk order of components around the S4 SoC.
    Which was a well known fact? It has been published that they were sitting on 20 million S4 SoC's? For years? Maybe this is true but stating things as fact when we don't really know is not good debate. I see how you could INFER this, but not know it.
    01-21-17 04:40 PM
  25. conite's Avatar
    Which was a well known fact? It has been published that they were sitting on 20 million S4 SoC's? For years? Maybe this is true but stating things as fact when we don't really know is not good debate. I see how you could INFER this, but not know it.
    Ok, you got me. I didn't personally handle the actual paperwork on the sale.

    I also didn't say the information was published (as you know very well it wouldn't be). I said BlackBerry employees have indicated as much.
    01-21-17 04:48 PM
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