[magicdesign]

Is there a question there???

Seems to be two questions from what I can see...

[bitek]

Here is what BlackBerry exec says
BlackBerry are transitiong to Android and will drop BlackBerry 10, says BlackBerry exec

It's almost like a warning bell that we will go to Android don't buy bb10 phones & Don't trust us, we can ditch you whenever we want bcoz we are BlackBerry. Will keep with Passport as long as it serve me after that BlackBerry GTH

I sold my z30 and I got priv. It is what it is. I rather see blackberry making awesome android phones than none at all. Blackberry is loosing money on bb10 phones. Priv is FIRST blackberry phone in years that has generally good to excellent reviews. The phone is awesome. My best blackberry ever. It blows z10 and z30 out of the water. I would love to see passport with android as well. Smartphone market is tough. Just look at microsoft. It has vast resources. So much more than blackberry and yet it keeps loosing money over and over and over again. blackberry can be serious player in android market imo. It has very unique preposition and it is definietly unique and not copy cat. Blackberry has good shot being major player in android space. I also think that google will help blackberry because it is in google business to see blackberry succeed in order to 1. Get inroads in corporate world 2. Take away samsung monopoly.

[bitek]

I'm not seeing this as a far-fetched scenario. Realistically, the PRIV isn't selling like hotcakes. Updates are slow to come (where is Marshmallow?), the QC on the device is abysmal, keyboard is near useless, the HUB is a shadow of its former self, and the promise of security and privacy is a pipe dream (it's not very useful to be told your house is on fire, when it's already on fire). I feel for BlackBerry, but I'm done with their management and double-speak, and therefore with BlackBerry itself. They can't commit to anything and they don't listen to feedback. They keep throwing crap at a wall hoping something sticks.

It is about high-time for them to exit the device and consumer-facing business all-together. BlackBerry proper should focus on MDM and IOT, especially automotive, with a few spinoff companies for consumer facing stuff, like BBM and (if it is still even in the plans) the BlackBerry experience suite.

1. How do you know how well priv is selling ?
2. Updates are slow ?! Really I got two updates since I got the phone
3. Keyboard is useless ? Keyboard is awesome !

Sorry but frankly your comments are *irrelevant*

Edited by SF : Sunday friendly.

[bitek]

I don't understand how they continue to sell BB10 devices? Why would anyone invest in a dead OS?
I was planning on buying a Passport and now I won't

This sucks..Windows phones are almost dead and BB10is toast..we need more choices not less.

You do realize why this happens ? It is because it is extra expensive to maintain same apps for 3 or 4 operating systems. Android and ios have 95 percent of the market.

[bitek]

Excellent point. Look at Apple for goodness sake. They make a huge profit per phone. That's what BB as a company should target; a premium Android phone. I haven't seen a Priv yet in person but Priv and even more so Vienna, really interest me.

I have seen priv few times already before I got it and each time owners were extra excited about priv

[bitek]

Yes, I agree that the Priv will not bring them to anything like the 5M break-even volume needed. Which is why I continue to believe that the long-term goal is not to sustain hardware as a viable business, but merely to get some short-term revenue from the Priv (and the Vienna when it finally gets released) in order to complete the company's much-publicised goal of transitioning to software. And then the Priv will be allowed to die... just like the BB10 handsets... there'll be no announcement (just as there wasn't with BB10), it'll just be that there will be no successor device to the Priv - ever!

At that point, BB10 history will repeat. The uber-fans will insist that a successor device to the Priv is coming, that BB doesn't need to play by the same annual device refresh rules as everyone else in the industry, and that anyway their Priv still works great and no better device could possibly be created.

In time, it will become generally realised that BB is out of the hardware business - not because of any announcement but because of the simple truth that they won't have released a new phone in the previous couple of years.

Blackberry needed to sell 5Mil of BB10. I would imagine that blackberry does need to sell much less with android phones because of lower costs

[JeepBB]

I'm not sure what are the arguments to back up this factually. Anyhow it's not the PRIV alone, it's the whole deviceS range that is supposed to meet this target. So count BB10 devices (for what it worse : nothing like zero) plus PRIV plus whatever device(s) they'll release in CY 2016.
I'm not ready to take a bet right now, neither to bury the option they can reach that level or at least clearly demonstrate they can do it and give it another year to meet profitability again.

I'm firmly of the opinion that BB will not achieve anything like 5M in annual device sales. And, it must be remembered that Chen's 5M guesstimate represents the break-even FLOOR for sustainable profitability. They have do much, much, better than that floor-figure to sustain hardware.

Given that all products tend to exhibit a skewed sales curve - a big peak near the start, and then a steadily diminishing number as sales tail off - BB will need to be declaring a frankly incredible (IMO) number of device sales in the ER on 1st April... and those numbers will need to be dominated by Priv sales. BB10 sales are well into their sales tail (but may be boosted a little by the "get it while you still can" buyers), BBOS sales will diminish further from the 100k of last quarter (which I'd assume are mostly replenishment/replacement sales for broken BBOS devices, so won't increase the userbase), so it's all on the Priv!

We'll see the evidence to support (or not, I guess) my view on 1st April.

[JeepBB]

Blackberry needed to sell 5Mil of BB10. I would imagine that blackberry does need to sell much less with android phones because of lower costs

Chen said 10M for BB10, not 5M.

And you are correct that the figure would be smaller for Android. Chen is now saying 5M in annual sales means hardware would be profitable.

But, as I've posted above, both of those figures are the floor. Sustainable profitability would require sustained sales above 5M in each and every year.

Sales rarely stay constant, they either grow, or fall. Most products follow a predicable sales curve - high sales at the start, lower as time passes. For the Priv to help BB deliver on the 5M total, it should be selling like crazy in the first few months after release - I've seen zero evidence that the Priv is selling like crazy, but I'm willing to wait on the April 1st ER to provide that evidence.

[jojon2se]

By the way; It is always rather depressing to see the utter capitulation on standards, whenever somebody tries to deflect criticism of deplorable actions on the part of a company, by saying :"that's business", as if that was any sort of valid defense. It's right up there with: "But Billy threw sand first!".

There have been less than perfectly scrupulous businessmen, who have opined things like: "business is war", but even with something as fundamentally barbaric as war, there is often a measure of accountability afterwards.

I don't care if Billy threw sand first. I do care if my child stoops to Billy's level, and there are one or two companies out in the world, who successfully conduct themselves ethically, and treat their customers with honesty and respect, without becoming trampled by more ruthless (or as some would twist it: "less naive") competitors. Being nice can be a strength on the market, believe it or not.

[JulesDB]

BlackBerry10 is EOL but the BlackBerry Beta Zone is crowded!!

Posted via CB10

[Richard Buckley]

Why do people keep saying stuff like this?

Because people would rather just say what they think than take the time to research and find out the truth.

LeapSTR100-2/10.3.2.2876

[Richard Buckley]

Why hasn't anyone figured out how to run Google play services with BB10? Isn't easier to run android on bb10 than to make android more like BB10?

I haven't actually done it on my BlackBerry, but unless I'm mistaken cobalt has figured that out.

They don't make Android more like BB10 they wrap the Android experience in a BB10 shell so the host OS can deal with it. If you have ever used any of the popular virtualization tools available today you would find this a common experience.

LeapSTR100-2/10.3.2.2876

[dejanh]

1. How do you know how well priv is selling ?
2. Updates are slow ?! Really I got two updates since I got the phone
3. Keyboard is useless ? Keyboard is awesome !

Sorry but frankly your comments are full of crap.

1. It's pretty trivial to extrapolate a range of how many units have been sold from their financial reporting to date, and with that to gauge how "well" the device is doing overall. It's selling better than recent BlackBerry 10 devices, but still like crap. This can also be easily validated by the number of devices on second-hand market, and then further reaffirmed by talking to a few retailers in busy locations.
2. I'm sorry, security patches and a handful of weak bug fixes to BlackBerry apps don't count as updates. Last I checked you're still on Lollipop, with no timeline for an upgrade to Marshmallow. No matter though right because the PRIV will sell like hell when Samsung and the rest drop their new devices in a couple of weeks. FWIW, the HUB email composer does not even have spellcheck.
3. Buggy, too small, doesn't feel anything like BlackBerry keyboards. To top it off, it can't even keep up with typing input as has been noted several times on this forum. Perhaps some of it was addressed in the (December?) patch, but I doubt it.

No sir, my opinion is based on facts. You just didn't wake up to them yet.

[BigBadWulf]

Friendly reminder...

This thread is about the end of BB10. For the end of GooBerry, stay tuned to this forum.

[drfever]

The reality is... I've been loyal to BlackBerry to a fault.

No matter what BlackBerry came out with we all went Gaga over it even if it was junk.

While we were jumping over each other to get devices that fewer app developers supported, people were moving on with smiles on their faces.

I know many a corporate environment that uses ios... never heard of one security breach.

I know many an environment that uses Android.... I've never heard of a breach.

Bb10 this or that and the other doesn't matter if nobody buys it.

Blend the best part of bb10 into Android, make handsets that people like and can afford and society will be fine.

Fact is.... they may have priced many poeple out of the Priv. Their first foray into Android and they price their device too high imo.

Anyways... I just want a phone that works, is app friendly and one that gets the job done.

The reality is, ios, Android or BlackBerry10 all fit that need.

I have loyalty to one thing only now... price and a decent featured handset.

Posted via CB10

[fahmed]

Well said. I feel the same about my Z30.

[RyanGermann]

BlackBerry is a business after all. Not a charity venture to fulfill our smartphone desires.

Rationalizing that BlackBerry "did what they had to do" is hogwash.

Here's something to think about:

If BlackBerry's management culture was to respect customers better, perhaps they wouldn't be in this situation?

For example, when BlackBerry started to falter, the tech media bloggers were BRUTAL. I don't just mean "constructive criticism", I mean totally MEAN SPIRITED and intentionally misleading as to BlackBerry's prospects. It wasn't just a bit of fun blogging... it was outright HATRED, in a pathological seething, spitting manner. It stands to reason that in some way BlackBerry had pissed off these bloggers in such a way that they became actually VENGEFUL, not just "tech reporting" as it can be.

BlackBerry didn't treat customers disrespectfully because they "had" to i.e. they had no other choice... they did it because they "had" to, like a lioness "has to" hunt a gazelle... the behaviour is ingrained deeply. BlackBerry certainly doesn't see treating customers badly as anything other than "we did what we had to do." Does the lioness HATE the gazelle? No. But the way a lioness treats a gazelle isn't exactly "nice" is it.

Now, setting aside the nature metaphor, unlike lions and other predators in the wild, BlackBerry management has a CHOICE about how they treat their customers. The business world has many stories of companies that come on hard times and yet they treat their customers and their employees far FAR better than BlackBerry Ltd. management did. We all saw cases of exceptional management staff at BlackBerry going above and beyond... and to a person, all of those excellent management types have left the company... I can only speculate that it was because they weren't given the leeway to do right, so rather than be part of a bad plan, they left. The toxic corporate culture drove the best of the high-profile BlackBerry management staff away.

So, don't say they "did what they had to do" as though the way it played out was the ONLY way it could have played out... there are thousands of excellent ideas on this very discussion forum that make very reasonable and well thought out suggestions of what BlackBerry could do going forward (not just 20/20 hindsight)... but BlackBerry management is so deep in their own drama that they've decided not to worry about customers or employees any more. There are well-documented problems in the BlackBerry corporate culture... and BlackBerry management's inability or disinterest in fixing that was part of the problem.

That's the reason why I'm done with BlackBerry. Not because of the proprietary technology, which is excellent, not because of the front-line staff, who really do try their best in a tough situation... it's the high-level management that are to blame here. They simply can't be trusted. Anyone investing in anything BlackBerry at this point is just a glutton for punishment I guess. Eventually the patent portfolio will be someone else's property, and hopefully, whomever owns it will properly pursue the niche-market for PKB devices, backed with economies of scale in other business units so the whole company isn't riding on a properly-executed single-product launch, time and time again, like BlackBerry.

[BigBadWulf]

Rationalizing that BlackBerry "did what they had to do" is hogwash.

Here's something to think about:

If BlackBerry's management culture was to respect customers better, perhaps they wouldn't be in this situation?

For example, when BlackBerry started to falter, the tech media bloggers were BRUTAL. I don't just mean "constructive criticism", I mean totally MEAN SPIRITED and intentionally misleading as to BlackBerry's prospects. It wasn't just a bit of fun blogging... it was outright HATRED, in a pathological seething, spitting manner. It stands to reason that in some way BlackBerry had pissed off these bloggers in such a way that they became actually VENGEFUL, not just "tech reporting" as it can be.

BlackBerry didn't treat customers disrespectfully because they "had" to i.e. they had no other choice... they did it because they "had" to, like a lioness "has to" hunt a gazelle... the behaviour is ingrained deeply. BlackBerry certainly doesn't see treating customers badly as anything other than "we did what we had to do." Does the lioness HATE the gazelle? No. But the way a lioness treats a gazelle isn't exactly "nice" is it.

Now, setting aside the nature metaphor, unlike lions and other predators in the wild, BlackBerry management has a CHOICE about how they treat their customers. The business world has many stories of companies that come on hard times and yet they treat their customers and their employees far FAR better than BlackBerry Ltd. management did. We all saw cases of exceptional management staff at BlackBerry going above and beyond... and to a person, all of those excellent management types have left the company... I can only speculate that it was because they weren't given the leeway to do right, so rather than be part of a bad plan, they left. The toxic corporate culture drove the best of the high-profile BlackBerry management staff away.

So, don't say they "did what they had to do" as though the way it played out was the ONLY way it could have played out... there are thousands of excellent ideas on this very discussion forum that make very reasonable and well thought out suggestions of what BlackBerry could do going forward (not just 20/20 hindsight)... but BlackBerry management is so deep in their own drama that they've decided not to worry about customers or employees any more. There are well-documented problems in the BlackBerry corporate culture... and BlackBerry management's inability or disinterest in fixing that was part of the problem.

That's the reason why I'm done with BlackBerry. Not because of the proprietary technology, which is excellent, not because of the front-line staff, who really do try their best in a tough situation... it's the high-level management that are to blame here. They simply can't be trusted. Anyone investing in anything BlackBerry at this point is just a glutton for punishment I guess. Eventually the patent portfolio will be someone else's property, and hopefully, whomever owns it will properly pursue the niche-market for PKB devices, backed with economies of scale in other business units so the whole company isn't riding on a properly-executed single-product launch, time and time again, like BlackBerry.

You have a lot of emotion posted here, but I have no idea what this has to do with "treating customers with respect", nor what BlackBerry could have done better about the PlayBook. They apologized and explained while they wanted BB10 on it, it could not happen.

I'm disappointed in their failures, of which there are a myriad, but I don't feel disrespected. Had they turned all our devices off, then you might have a point.

[Chuck Finley69]

Rationalizing that BlackBerry "did what they had to do" is hogwash.

Here's something to think about:

If BlackBerry's management culture was to respect customers better, perhaps they wouldn't be in this situation?

For example, when BlackBerry started to falter, the tech media bloggers were BRUTAL. I don't just mean "constructive criticism", I mean totally MEAN SPIRITED and intentionally misleading as to BlackBerry's prospects. It wasn't just a bit of fun blogging... it was outright HATRED, in a pathological seething, spitting manner. It stands to reason that in some way BlackBerry had pissed off these bloggers in such a way that they became actually VENGEFUL, not just "tech reporting" as it can be.

BlackBerry didn't treat customers disrespectfully because they "had" to i.e. they had no other choice... they did it because they "had" to, like a lioness "has to" hunt a gazelle... the behaviour is ingrained deeply. BlackBerry certainly doesn't see treating customers badly as anything other than "we did what we had to do." Does the lioness HATE the gazelle? No. But the way a lioness treats a gazelle isn't exactly "nice" is it.

Now, setting aside the nature metaphor, unlike lions and other predators in the wild, BlackBerry management has a CHOICE about how they treat their customers. The business world has many stories of companies that come on hard times and yet they treat their customers and their employees far FAR better than BlackBerry Ltd. management did. We all saw cases of exceptional management staff at BlackBerry going above and beyond... and to a person, all of those excellent management types have left the company... I can only speculate that it was because they weren't given the leeway to do right, so rather than be part of a bad plan, they left. The toxic corporate culture drove the best of the high-profile BlackBerry management staff away.

So, don't say they "did what they had to do" as though the way it played out was the ONLY way it could have played out... there are thousands of excellent ideas on this very discussion forum that make very reasonable and well thought out suggestions of what BlackBerry could do going forward (not just 20/20 hindsight)... but BlackBerry management is so deep in their own drama that they've decided not to worry about customers or employees any more. There are well-documented problems in the BlackBerry corporate culture... and BlackBerry management's inability or disinterest in fixing that was part of the problem.

That's the reason why I'm done with BlackBerry. Not because of the proprietary technology, which is excellent, not because of the front-line staff, who really do try their best in a tough situation... it's the high-level management that are to blame here. They simply can't be trusted. Anyone investing in anything BlackBerry at this point is just a glutton for punishment I guess. Eventually the patent portfolio will be someone else's property, and hopefully, whomever owns it will properly pursue the niche-market for PKB devices, backed with economies of scale in other business units so the whole company isn't riding on a properly-executed single-product launch, time and time again, like BlackBerry.

What exactly are you accusing BlackBerry of in regards to employees? How does BlackBerry mistreat their employees?

Posted via CB10

[david7saad]

This guy?



He isn't John Chen

[donsarlo]

Go figure. If you didn't see this coming, you're blind

[JeepBB]

Go figure. If you didn't see this coming, you're blind

You must be new here

There are *still* posters here expecting a new BB10 phone in 2017, based purely on Chen saying "no BB10 phone *this* year".

Hope trumps reality everytime!

[schlurch]

Maybe someone like LG will buy BB10 and put it in televisions too.

Posted via CB10

I loved and still miss webOS on smartphones.
In fact, this is the main reason I chose a TV by LG instead one of another competitor.

[bitek]

1. It's pretty trivial to extrapolate a range of how many units have been sold from their financial reporting to date, and with that to gauge how "well" the device is doing overall. It's selling better than recent BlackBerry 10 devices, but still like crap. This can also be easily validated by the number of devices on second-hand market, and then further reaffirmed by talking to a few retailers in busy locations.
2. I'm sorry, security patches and a handful of weak bug fixes to BlackBerry apps don't count as updates. Last I checked you're still on Lollipop, with no timeline for an upgrade to Marshmallow. No matter though right because the PRIV will sell like hell when Samsung and the rest drop their new devices in a couple of weeks. FWIW, the HUB email composer does not even have spellcheck.
3. Buggy, too small, doesn't feel anything like BlackBerry keyboards. To top it off, it can't even keep up with typing input as has been noted several times on this forum. Perhaps some of it was addressed in the (December?) patch, but I doubt it.

No sir, my opinion is based on facts. You just didn't wake up to them yet.

2. Last i checked patches are updates.
3. My keyboard works just fine and it does feel like blackberry thank you

It is clear that you are disgruntled bb10 user who cannot go over the fact that bb10 failed and you come up with all these lame excuses not to get priv. I will keep my priv and spread the word how awesome this phone is because it is the best blackberry in years

[Deckard79]

As folk have been discussing how BlackBerry treat customers and staff...

Something anecdotal just to throw out there:

1) When fairly new to BB10, I started to invest in movies from BlackBerry World. A couple of BB10 updates later, they suddenly stopped loading (a few before I'd even watched them) due to a 'maximum permitted number of devices'. The DRM was interpreting updates as device changes. I contacted BB Help via Twitter and... guess what? They sorted it! They must have reset something from their servers, and all was well. But a few months later it happened again (and I'd bought more films). "No worries" I thought, and contacted them again...

This time BB Help were utterly hopeless. They didn't understand the problem and showed no desire to help, returning completely hopeless information. I've never had a positive experience from them since (and never been able to watch the movies I'd bought).

I'm mentioning this because, rather than having any intent to short-change anyone, I think there's probably a lot of organisational chaos within the company and a lot is left to chance in terms of 'who you get' when something is reported.

2. A couple of years ago I noticed BlackBerry recruiting in the UK for positions (related to BB10), that I considered myself suitable for. I work in Software Support, and have developed a couple of small applications used by a few companies (a couple of multinationals in fact). As a huge BlackBerry fan, I set aside everyone's cynicism of the company's 'imminent demise' and carefully ran through the online application process.

The process itself was BROKEN. The site wouldn't load properly, questions of no relevance were asked, pages failed to load or render correctly, you were asked to upload your CV but then basically had to try to replicate that on their own forms (the options from which were too narrow to allow accurate entries). It was almost encouraging people NOT to apply!

Anyway, I completed the process. Waited. No one got back.

Now, I'm not angry about that - they can choose who they like. And of course in hindsight, this would have been a bad career move for me. BUT... how many folk applying would have had a quite detailed knowledge of and enthusiasm of BB10 (and of BlackBerry) like myself, as well as all the required skills (and more?). I really don't know what their criteria was, but there you go... they have their QC, Testing and Support teams... and they're generally pretty terrible.

I don't think willful neglect plays a part with BlackBerry. But accidental neglect/incompetence/poor-organisation? Definitely.