[kvndoom]

So what??? Is Volkswagon going out of business because of their massive diesel car scandal that undermined the faith of consumers and has generated far more headlines than BlackBerry's problems releasing BB10.

You think you reverse the ship just because the first hardware release was not great? Or the OS needed more polish after the initial release?

Corporations have to have more inner strength and belief in their products. They can't panic like BlackBerry obviously did -- all the way up to the BoD. And... they use marketing messages to change public perception of the corporate identity.

Posted via CB10

Volkswagen had the cash to survive the nearly 20 billion dollars that the diesel scandal is costing them. And there will be many lost future sales. BlackBerry barely survived BB10. Otherwise the company would not have been put up for sale mere months after the launch of 'teh bestest OS evar'

And since you want to go the VW route, bear in mind that VW will no longer sell TDI's in the north American market. Now their focus is EV's and hybrids. So we can totally relate that move to BlackBerry ditching its OS that cost it billions. What's that about reversing the ship?

Yeah I keep up with the automotive business too, not just phones. Next?

Blackberry Poptart SE - Cricket Wireless

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

Oh, really? How much do you think Microsoft spent marketing Windows phone? What source or sources do you base that on? This claim only underscores how pro-Chen/BB10-must-die people make up facts to support their narrative. MSFT notoriously did not market or support its mobile effort. Listen to old Windows Weekly episodes with Leo Laporte. Paul Thurrott complained for YEARS that MSFT was not updating its mobile OS and was badly neglecting it thereby dooming it.

Secondly, I am not saying marketing a bad OS or a mediocre OS brings sales. My point is that a resplendent OS -- if people know about it -- can bring sales. Windows mobile is not an outstanding mobile OS. BB10 is in my opinion an outstanding OS (even without all the apps).

Problem is that only your opinion...... which is in conflict with most other peoples opinions here (and the facts).


But it is clear you don't want to believe what others have told you over and over in other threads... so fine go on believing that it was just becuase BlackBerry didn't market their phones. Apps didn't matter to consumers, hardware quality and prices wasn't an issue, company being of the brink of bankruptcy had no bearing on enterprise's willingness to buy, the lack of direct upgrade paths didn't matter. It's all because Chen didn't want to spend several hundred million dollars a year on advertising.... correctly.

In the end it really doesn't matter.... why. Just that it is over, and it's time to move on.

[DrBoomBotz]

Problem is that only your opinion...... which is in conflict with most other peoples opinions here (and the facts).


But it is clear you don't want to believe what others have told you over and over in other threads... so fine go on believing that it was just becuase BlackBerry didn't market their phones. Apps didn't matter to consumers, hardware quality and prices wasn't an issue, company being of the brink of bankruptcy had no bearing on enterprise's willingness to buy, the lack of direct upgrade paths didn't matter. It's all because Chen didn't want to spend several hundred million dollars a year on advertising.... correctly.

In the end it really doesn't matter.... why. Just that it is over, and it's time to move on.

Some folks are more "determined" than others https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda .

[tigre2098]

I think for two reasons:

1) No much apps (native BlackBerry apps I mean)
2) No advertisement

Posted via CB10

[arkenoi]

It's all about the apps.

Blackberry World is full of scam and crap (just like Nokia Ovi Store before it failed). More than a coincidence.

There was ONE thing that could save BB10: security. But instead of riding the Snowden's shockwave, Chen decided to betray his own customers because he thought "governments" matter more. Guess what? No more government contracts as well for the same obvious reason -- no one likes traitors.

[kbalaz]

BlackBerry is suffering from Nickelback Syndrome. No matter how good a device they put out, people are going to hate on them because its BlackBerry. They are embarrassed to say they like BlackBerry because of this 'Syndrome' and go to something else. I like BlackBerry and I like Nickelback, so flame away, I'm a big boy and don't care what others think.

[Slash82]

My opinion:
1.) Everything stands or falls with social media apps - not the total number of apps!
(Native social media apps = most important; The rest = even Android sideloads were ok. But I'm sure they would follow social media ones by itself)

2.) As OS10 came to market it was not ready - OS10.2.1 was the mature enough!

3.) After OS10.2.1 - the lack of hardware and old re-used hardware!

4.) Bad investments: Superbowl ad & Alicia Keys (instead of spending that money on social media)

5.) No real roadmap that made sense:
There should have been a "Z-line" (touch devices and a real successor for the Z10) and the "Q-line" (keyboard devices) and a "premium line" like the Passport.
People were happy with the Z10 - except with the battery life.

6.) The Classic and Leap didn't make sense:
If you move to the Classic with the toolbelt - they should have made on a Passport chipset basis with Q10 size.
Leap couldn't fit into anywhere: Not a successor for Z30 (which had better specs) nor for the Z10 (which had the same chipset, but was way more premium and smaller).

7.) Bad marketing up to no marketing.

8.) No SDKs for developers

9.) No support from BlackBerry itself

10.) BlackBerry does not get what potential the OS has (from the technical point of view) and how much people would love to break out from that iOS-Android-duopoly. But giving those things above. There is no way to escape that.

[Packolypse]

Yeah. Probably better. BBOS 7.x still had enough market clout to have the big name apps. Having them being able to continue to be used on the new platform would have been better than porting android apps that never came. Look at everyone that has ported someone else's runtimes to their platforms. It never works out. OS/2 lost. WINE hasn't help linux. Even MS saw the light trying to support android and iOS ports and conversions on their mobile platform. It at least would made the transition easier from BBOS 7 to BB10 rather than forcing the users to upgrade to what was an unknown platform. They could over time fazed out BBOS support on BB10 as the platform matured and native development took hold. Hindsight 20/20 I guess.

^^^

I agree about the android runtime thing - but can you imagine what the situation would be like if there wasn't an android runtime?? For the past 3-4 days i've had an android phone in my amazon shopping cart. I'm this close "-" to pulling the trigger and buying it. That means i'll have to get rid of my Classic. But i'm looking at the core apps I use on a daily basis: whatsapp - only supported until June 2017. Snapchat - not on BB10 + android version wont work. Facebook Messenger - official client doesn't work, I can't get an older version to work and Face10 is a big battery drain on my Classic. Facebook via the web doesn't alert you to new messages, rendering it useless. Google Drive - wont work. VPN - again, it wont work (android version). Wickr - not on BB10 / android version wont work. No official paypal/eBay app. No gumtree app. I could go on.

I'm struggling. I hate android with a passion - I believe it's Google's way of data-mining everything we do online. SMS messages can be sent back to Google if you don't turn off a certain option. Google drive - they'll have your data (unless it's encrypted). Youtube - they know what videos you watch. Gmail - they have all of your emails. Google maps - knows exactly where you've been. Chrome - sends LOTS of data back to Google about your browsing. Google to me, is evil. However, their services are so damn good that most people look past all of that.

If the Classic had a higher runtime, i'd keep it and love every second of it. I've said it in another thread, but lack of apps/old runtime will the the reason I ditch my Classic.

[Invictus0]

Oh, really? How much do you think Microsoft spent marketing Windows phone? What source or sources do you base that on? This claim only underscores how pro-Chen/BB10-must-die people make up facts to support their narrative. MSFT notoriously did not market or support its mobile effort. Listen to old Windows Weekly episodes with Leo Laporte. Paul Thurrott complained for YEARS that MSFT was not updating its mobile OS and was badly neglecting it thereby dooming it.

Can you link to some of these episodes? Windows Phone was supported quite heavily under Ballmer.

As for advertising, here's an article from 2012 that highlights how much money was being spent by OEM's to market their platforms.

https://www.theguardian.com/business...as-advertising

[early2bed]

If it was just marketing then wouldn't most people on CrackBerry.com from 7 years ago still be here? I mean, they knew about all of the new handsets inside and out and they still switched platforms. There certainly was plenty of marketing here if that's all that was needed.

[CBCListener]

There are a number of suggestions as to why BlackBerry BB10, as well as BlackBerry itself, failed. There have been books and newspaper articles on it (I'd suggest, for one, the fairly un-provocative one on the Globe and Mail website) but, aside from the lack of application support brought about by the OS re-tool (which obsolesced all the BBOS applications...a big deal for consumers, truly)...the biggest reason why BlackBerry failed was because Mike and Jim just felt that the world is their oyster, that they had invented the market and therefore owned it. They didn't.

Now, it's fair to say that Steve Jobs really hadn't had an original thought in all his days...okay, I'll give you the Apple II, maybe even the Macintosh...but the introduction of iPhone, first, and Jobs' inspired design and the cache' of Apple, after their success with the iPad at the time, was the first nail. The next was Lazaridus' dismissal of iPhone as a network buster and a toy. Of course, he was right...long time BB users can remember that as this monster was deployed in major metropolitan centers (New York, San Francisco and others) the load on AT&T's network caused all sorts of disturbances by all users, with email and SMS delays measured in minutes and sometimes hours, as well as slow-to-non-existent voice. It didn't matter, in the end, because iPhone users had their new toy, and BlackBerry became irrelevant. By the time BlackBerry released the multiply-flawed Storm, it was all over except the crying.

[markmall]

Volkswagen had the cash to survive the nearly 20 billion dollars that the diesel scandal is costing them. And there will be many lost future sales. BlackBerry barely survived BB10. Otherwise the company would not have been put up for sale mere months after the launch of 'teh bestest OS evar'

And since you want to go the VW route, bear in mind that VW will no longer sell TDI's in the north American market. Now their focus is EV's and hybrids. So we can totally relate that move to BlackBerry ditching its OS that cost it billions. What's that about reversing the ship?

Yeah I keep up with the automotive business too, not just phones. Next?

Blackberry Poptart SE - Cricket Wireless

My point was that VW is spending money to resurrect it's brand which it must do to stay alive. To take the analogy further as you insist, VW did not stop making VWs and license their brand to Mercedes because they lost faith in their ability to build and sell their own cars.

Posted via CB10

[markmall]

Problem is that only your opinion...... which is in conflict with most other peoples opinions here (and the facts).


But it is clear you don't want to believe what others have told you over and over in other threads... so fine go on believing that it was just becuase BlackBerry didn't market their phones. Apps didn't matter to consumers, hardware quality and prices wasn't an issue, company being of the brink of bankruptcy had no bearing on enterprise's willingness to buy, the lack of direct upgrade paths didn't matter. It's all because Chen didn't want to spend several hundred million dollars a year on advertising.... correctly.

In the end it really doesn't matter.... why. Just that it is over, and it's time to move on.

We can move on but don't misstate my opinion for your own purposes. Apps didn't matter to consumers? Did I ever say that? No, I never said that. The point I have made is that BB10 and certain BB10 devices like the Passport could have found a robust niche market if Chen had played his cards better.

Unless you think Chen is a liar -- which is debatable -- he himself believed that a "prosumer" market existed that could sustain BB10.

Posted via CB10

[markmall]

I think for two reasons:

1) No much apps (native BlackBerry apps I mean)
2) No advertisement

Posted via CB10

One BlackBerry could do something about; the other it could not.

Posted via CB10

[markmall]

If it was just marketing then wouldn't most people on CrackBerry.com from 7 years ago still be here? I mean, they knew about all of the new handsets inside and out and they still switched platforms. There certainly was plenty of marketing here if that's all that was needed.

There has been no new BB10 device in how many years? People here were gadget people. The ones that left could still be using their Passports or Z30s but how much is there to talk about?

Posted via CB10

[kvndoom]

My point was that VW is spending money to resurrect it's brand which it must do to stay alive. To take the analogy further as you insist, VW did not stop making VWs and license their brand to Mercedes because they lost faith in their ability to build and sell their own cars.

Posted via CB10

You can twist it any way you want (which of course you will) but that makes you no less wrong. They kept selling the product (car/phones) but stopped selling the engine (diesel/BB10). Blackberry might not be making phones in-house but Blackberry phones are still being made. Just not with the OS of choice for <0.1% of the market. Volkswagen has been one of the top two worldwide automakers for many years. Of course they have the war chest to survive. Samsung survived the 18 billion dollar cost of the exploding battery fiasco because it had the money to do so. Blackberry has been in the "other" category of marketshare for quite some time, and was heading towards bankruptcy in 2013. BB doesn't have the money to sustain a dead OS.

[app_Developer]

My point was that VW is spending money to resurrect it's brand which it must do to stay alive. To take the analogy further as you insist, VW did not stop making VWs and license their brand to Mercedes because they lost faith in their ability to build and sell their own cars.

VW has the wherewithal to do that. If not, if that risk was too high for them, they might well have just sold themselves to another player.

What works for a company that is still the largest in its industry, with massive financial and political support is not what would have worked for BB.

[Bogdan Tudor Dan]

The first time I heard about BlackBerry 10 was when I've seen a demo video in a Orange shop. I had a BlackBerry Curve at that time. I tried to find out more about BlackBerry 10 and I searched the Internet for it. I know I could've ask at the store, but those stores were always crowdy.
The only thing I could find were some reviews for the Z10.
I didn't own a Z10 when it came out, I was able to update it at BB10.2.x when I bought it, so there were no bugs in the OS for me and I was happy I didn't take into consideration the bad things I heard in the reviews.
Speaking about reviews, I found out that the Z10 is made of magnesium and not plastic only after I bought it.
Battery life? Better than the battery life on a Iphone5.
OS? I was amazed with its functionality.
The apps I needed were there, even more, with Facebook on BlackBerry 10 I was able to read my notifications, my messages, to send a message without being distracted by other extra things since I could do that from HUB without opening the app.

But let's go back to the period of time between the moment I've first find out about BlackBerry 10 and the moment I bought my Z10.
I was not sure if I should spend so much money on that device because the reviewers didn't recommend it, because I read a lot of news about BlackBerry going out of business, because everybody told me not to buy a BlackBerry device because they are bankrupt (and this was after I was explaining to them that I am not talking about the old Blackberries and they were surprised BlackBerry made an all-touch device). I was afraid I will be sorry for buying it, but I really wanted to have a BlackBerry Z10.

Finally after I bought it, I realised it was the best decision I could make.

BlackBerry didn't promote their new platform enough? I agree, they did not.
Some reviewers were not honest about BlackBerry 10? I would say yes, but I didn't have a BlackBerry 10 device when it came out so I may be wrong.
There was an app gap? Yes, it was. I consider that one of the ways the big companies are controlling the market. If we say an ecosystem is weak because it doesn't have the main 3rd party apps, we cannot say there are no important apps for that platform because of the small numbers of consumers. It's like a circle of excuses and each one is the cause of the other.


What could BlackBerry 10 offer as a plus?

The possibility to use social media features via HUB without opening the app. (of course Facebook and others didn't agree with this and they sabotaged this possibility) .
OS stability, real multitasking (apps weren't crashing when multitasking)
Security.
Built it messaging (pin messages, BBM), built in audio and video calling (BBM).
Great design and great build quality.
Using something different.
Long lasting devices with OS updates for a long period of time (I have on my Z10 the same OS version as I have on my Passport and it's still running as new)
BlackBerry services are not tracking my every step as in the case of Google Services)
Great keyboards, virtual and physical. The BlackBerry Z10 keyboard is the first keyboard I could use it with predictions on without being a pain in the ***. I was able to type really fast, comparing with any other keyboard out there.
And there are many things that were better on BlackBerry 10.

In my honest opinion, all the listed reasons on this thread for the BlackBerry 10 so called failure are true. I said almost because I didn't read everything you wrote.

For the moment there is no other devices I would like to change my BlackBerry Z10 or my BlackBerry Passport with, and that is because of the BlackBerry 10 OS and because of the amazing touch-enabled keyboard on my Passport (another thing you can not find on another brand of smartphone).

Posted via CB10

[Bogdan Tudor Dan]

Apps, apps, apps...always the apps doomed BB10 and little marketing. Most people thought BlackBerry was dying and lets face it, when the iPhone came out, that put BB on life support soon afterwards.

Exactly, Apple did that by having a great marketing. In my opinion the first IPhone was a stupidphone and not a smartphone comparing with the Nokia devices on the market at that time. It was all marketing.

Posted via CB10

[sidtek50]

Exactly, Apple did that by having a great marketing. In my opinion the first IPhone was a stupidphone and not a smartphone comparing with the Nokia devices on the market at that time. It was all marketing.

Posted via CB10

Not a smartphone?? That's the very first time the most revolutionary mobile phone in the history of the world has ever been called a "stupid phone" and "not a smartphone". This line of thinking is exactly why BB bit the dust - because their stakeholders thought the exact same thing you think. The iPhone 3G had just 128mb ram. Let that sink in. 128.....megabytes. And look what Apple managed to squeeze out of it.

Apple sold 1 million 3G devices within 2 days. When it was released it didn't have full MMS functionality but within an update or two, Apple provided MMS functionality. The build quality was excellent, at the time, one of the better built devices. It was, as the name suggests, capable of 3G unlike many other phones at the time. And the obvious one: the app store was already incredible seeing as Apple had freely released the SDK for developer to jump on.

The iPhone 3G was absolutely phenomenal and really built on the 2G. Sure, Steve Jobs was a marketing genius, but he also listened and innovated. The reason Apple had so much success with the iPhone is because they listened to what customers want. Blackberry don't always listen and they didn't innovate much at the time. It's only now they're starting to innovate e.g bringing the best part of Blackberry (hub, notes, password keeper) to android in the form of .....apps. Ironic really. They had some grade A quality apps themselves but didn't provide an SDK for devs to make grade A apps on BB10...

[Nguyen1]

Was it 3g? I thought it was recently declared totally dead as a phone after at&t dropped 2g support this year.

The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.

[Tre Lawrence]

Exactly, Apple did that by having a great marketing. In my opinion the first IPhone was a stupidphone and not a smartphone comparing with the Nokia devices on the market at that time. It was all marketing.

Interesting.

Marketing sure seems to be be-all and end-all for lot of folks.

[Bogdan Tudor Dan]

Interesting.

Marketing sure seems to be be-all and end-all for lot of folks.

If that is what you want to understand from my comment.
To be more specific, today some folks are saying that BlackBerry 10 is outdated because there are no important 3rd party apps available. In the same time when IPhone didn't have all the apps you could use on a Nokia, that was not an issue. IPhone was a revolutionary phone because Steve Jobs said so. What is different about the app gap between then and now?

Just to explain why marketing is important nowadays. If you have a good product and a better product but for the good product you have a better marketing it will be sold way better. The difference would be enormous because people wanna be hip. I am not saying I agree with it, even the fact that I am using a BlackBerry 10 device is showing the fact that I will always use the product that is the best for what I need and not the one with the better marketing campaign.



Posted via CB10

[sidtek50]

If that is what you want to understand from my comment.
To be more specific, today some folks are saying that BlackBerry 10 is outdated because there are no important 3rd party apps available. In the same time when IPhone didn't have all the apps you could use on a Nokia, that was not an issue. IPhone was a revolutionary phone because Steve Jobs said so. What is different about the app gap between then and now?

Just to explain why marketing is important nowadays. If you have a good product and a better product but for the good product you have a better marketing it will be sold way better. The difference would be enormous because people wanna be hip. I am not saying I agree with it, even the fact that I am using a BlackBerry 10 device is showing the fact that I will always use the product that is the best for what I need and not the one with the better marketing campaign.



Posted via CB10

I think you're missing the point here. You're wondering why Nokia couldn't beat Apple? It's simple (pun intended). Apple beat Nokia because their devices were more simple to use. Check this out: https://steemit.com/steemit/@schatte...-learn-from-it

And I don't think you're right with the marketing suggestion. Marketing, or, over-marketing can kill a device too. Look at the Nokia N8. Haven't heard of it? Well here's why: Nokia marketed the crap out of it. 6 months before launch they were banging on about how fantastic it was....6 months later, people had forgotten, people didn't care and people were downright bored of waiting. Meanwhile, Apple shipped the iPhone. People could walk into a store, buy the iPhone, or order it online. The N8 was nowhere to be seen despite 6 months of marketing.

It's about ease of use (read: innovation), supply and demand, and marketing. Apple managed to get all 3 right. Nokia failed on ease of use and supply and demand, but got the marketing almost right. By marketing the phone before it was ready, it killed the hype, which killed the sales. Once your sales are killed, your reputation suffers and your competitor gains advantage.

And this is also why Android took off so rapidly. Google got the ease of use right, the supply and demand was covered by manufacturers worldwide and then the next thing was marketing. The manufacturers of android devices also market it. Google was always going to be onto a winner with android.

[Tre Lawrence]

If that is what you want to understand from my comment.
To be more specific, today some folks are saying that BlackBerry 10 is outdated because there are no important 3rd party apps available. In the same time when IPhone didn't have all the apps you could use on a Nokia, that was not an issue. IPhone was a revolutionary phone because Steve Jobs said so. What is different about the app gap between then and now?

Just to explain why marketing is important nowadays. If you have a good product and a better product but for the good product you have a better marketing it will be sold way better. The difference would be enormous because people wanna be hip. I am not saying I agree with it, even the fact that I am using a BlackBerry 10 device is showing the fact that I will always use the product that is the best for what I need and not the one with the better marketing campaign.

You said the original iPhone was all marketing.

The iPhone wasn't my cup of tea then or now (for daily driver), but it's not hard to see why it captured mindshare. It was better at several things than other products on the market.

Great marketing alone doesn't account for repeat sales.

I am fairly sure that most iPhone repeat customers are happy with their choices.