[Denise in Los Angeles]

It was more reasonable if no blackberry phones were in stores but still... what did Chen/Blackberry gain from this? Did any other carrier say, "Oh, I better not mess with Chen over at BlackBerry"?

Posted via CB10

You know that old saying "with friends like that, who needs enemies?" Well, Legere put it out there that he was not a friendly partner when he sabotaged sales of BlackBerry phones, so it was not like BlackBerry/Chen were losing a lot by walking away.

[elfabio80]

Sorry, you don't understand BlackBerry's cash position in 2013. Yes they had cash, but the majority of the cash was committed to inventory and parts at BlackBerry suppliers. If BlackBerry had said in Dec. of 2013 they were done with Hardware, they would have been out of cash and stuck with a lot of useless parts and inventory. Chen needed the 1 billion dollars cash in fusion to have liquid cash to keep BlackBerry afloat. BlackBerry was losing money like crazy in 2013 and 2014.

Go back and look deep at the numbers and you will see how bad the situation was at the end of 2013. The fact that BlackBerry is still in business at the start of 2017 is a fantastic business success story.

I don't know why people can't get the basic fact that if the BoD wanted to keep going after the HW market they would have hired a CEO with HW experience. Chen's background is transforming enterprise software companies. The fact that the BoD has stayed with Chen for over 3+ shows they are still on board with this strategy.

.....or that fire him would cost a lot of money and would damage further BlackBerry imagine as brand....

[johnyoule]

It saddens me that I am actually reading this because I can look back and remember the points made. Thinking then, that things will change and more people will come aboard after the Passport or classic or Priv etc etc. I held out thinking that that surely people would have a look at the phones and appreciate the build. Problem was. You couldn't find them. I have had to go online for my last 3 phones as they weren't available locally to see and pickup. See the shape feel it in your hand. We could have just had stalls in our city malls and people would have bought them. Easy!!
I could have been sold 20 passports just to people I know because they love the look and smoothness.
Users alone would have saved BB10 because there would have been value in developing the platform. They just NEEDED to get the phones into hands.

Posted via CB10

[early2bed]

This was pretty bad marketing. I'm trying to imagine Tim Cook putting a T-Mobile T-shirt on over a dress shirt after what happened.

[markmall]

I want to add something about the point being raised about parts commitments being a huge albatross. A great CEO would be able to find some solutions to this. There are ways to renegotiate contracts between business partners. This is especially true if one of the companies is in distress and might lose its business or even go into bankruptcy if the contract is not renegotiated. Blackberry could've said that if you give us a break we will source more parts in the future with our future phones.

Chen has done nothing creative to overcome any obstacles. It's just a long slog of selling things and whoring the company's trademark.

Posted via CB10

[markmall]

We could have just had stalls in our city malls and people would have bought them. Easy!!

It's sort of ironic that Chen finally opened a BlackBerry kiosk in New York City in order to promote his dear Priv. Too little, too late. They also have/had Passports there but based on the timing I'm sure it was for the Android devices. Masters of the Universe in Manhattan are not buying no DTEK garbage, IMO.



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[conite]

I want to add something about the point being raised about parts commitments being a huge albatross. A great CEO would be able to find some solutions to this. There are ways to renegotiate contracts between business partners. This is especially true if one of the companies is in distress and might lose its business or even go into bankruptcy if the contract is not renegotiated. Blackberry could've said that if you give us a break we will source more parts in the future with our future phones.

Chen has done nothing creative to overcome any obstacles. It's just a long slog of selling things and whoring the company's trademark.

Posted via CB10

Holy wild speculation.

[markmall]

Holy wild speculation.

I would say the parts commitment and its impact on BlackBerry's strategic decisions is speculation.

Posted via CB10

[sidtek50]

Something I didn't mention a few pages ago. Yet another reason Blackberry failed. Lack of functionality. Want to block a call on BB10? You can't. BB10 doesn't have the option. Sure, maybe some 3rd party paid apps do, but come on, this should be a core feature. Blows my mind how Blackberry have still not updated the software to do this.

Posted via CB10

[Invictus0]

It's sort of ironic that Chen finally opened a BlackBerry kiosk in New York City in order to promote his dear Priv. Too little, too late. They also have/had Passports there but based on the timing I'm sure it was for the Android devices. Masters of the Universe in Manhattan are not buying no DTEK garbage, IMO.



Posted via CB10

BlackBerry has been doing pop up stores for years, they even opened one in Germany around the time the Passport SE launched IIRC.

[ZeroBarrier]

BlackBerry has been doing pop up stores for years, they even opened one in Germany around the time the Passport SE launched IIRC.

Sir, there is no room in this thread for facts. There's only enough room for Chen hate to be spewed. Please take your facts elsewhere; thank you.

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[markmall]

BlackBerry has been doing pop up stores for years, they even opened one in Germany around the time the Passport SE launched IIRC.

Then I stand corrected but don't think it ever did this in North Am.

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[app_Developer]

I would say the parts commitment and its impact on BlackBerry's strategic decisions is speculation.

These commitments are literally spelled out in their quarterly financials.

[Velocitymj]

How BlackBerry blew it: The inside story - The Globe and Mail

Excellent and informative read.
It talks about all of the complaints that I had as a business owner (and wrote about in my original response to this thread) as well as substantiates in detail, what others have written here.
It appears to provide the definitive inside story and answers as to why BB10 and BlackBerry failed.
If this had been the first post to the OP, the discussion might be shorter.


Posted via CB10

[app_Developer]

I want to add something about the point being raised about parts commitments being a huge albatross. A great CEO would be able to find some solutions to this. There are ways to renegotiate contracts between business partners. This is especially true if one of the companies is in distress and might lose its business or even go into bankruptcy if the contract is not renegotiated. Blackberry could've said that if you give us a break we will source more parts in the future with our future phones.

Chen has done nothing creative to overcome any obstacles. It's just a long slog of selling things and whoring the company's trademark.

So suppose the suppliers wrote off 30% of this. That would still likely be more expensive than just producing the phones in limited quantities.

[markmall]

So suppose the suppliers wrote off 30% of this. That would still likely be more expensive than just producing the phones in limited quantities.

They could have used better SoCs and fewer of them, for example. Spend about the same but get more marketable phones that were genuine upgrades. They didn't need to make the Leap which was not a real upgrade.

To listen to you guys, Chen should have just taken a torched the cash. That is sort of what he did by doing everything halfway.

Posted via CB10

[markmall]

These commitments are literally spelled out in their quarterly financials.

Do you have the details?

Posted via CB10

[ZeroBarrier]

They could have used better SoCs and fewer of them, for example. Spend about the same but get more marketable phones that were genuine upgrades. They didn't need to make the Leap which was not a real upgrade.

To listen to you guys, Chen should have just taken a torched the cash. That is sort of what he did by doing everything halfway.

Posted via CB10

And charge even more per unit? They couldn't sell what they had at the time which was worth considerably less per unit. Other companies can use economies of scale to bring down the per unit price on higher end devices, but Blackberry hasn't been in such a position in a decade now.

You say they didn't need to make the Leap, but the Leap was never primarily intended for the American market; it was aimed more at emerging markets where Blackberry still sells regularly. It was never intended to be an upgrade either. Even making it as cheap as it was they couldn't get it to be cheap enough for those emerging markets and it didn't do all that well.

No offense to anyone, but a lot of readers need to get it through their heads that the hardware side of Blackberry was done, and it was done a long time ago; well before Chen was put at the helm. Blackberry lost its chance when it failed to compete with the first iPhone; period, full stop, end of story.

Posted via CB10

[someshkelkar3]

All those who say apps and everything... you are wrong!

It was the way BlackBerry presented the operating system. It should have catered to its own people first and then gone on to steal the android and ios users. It made the huge mistake by launching the Z10 first. We all know that the unique selling proposition of BlackBerry is its keyboard. They should have launched the Q10 first with a tool belt and Z30's specifications.
The next all touch phone they could have launched should have been the Z30. They should have done Samsung and Apple level of Marketing for these two. And the snapdragon s4 pro with the adreno 320 gpu was very relevant in 2012-13. It was considered flagship grade. In 2013 should have launched passport and another all touch phone which matched passport's specs. All this would attract a lot of users. And once you have a lot of users developers ignoring your platform seems like a career suicide for them. Blackberry's problem was too little...too late. If they fixed that well BlackBerry 10 would have outdone ios if not android.

Posted via CB10

[anon(6125289)]

If they did samsung and apple level marketing for them the company would have been bankrupt before Chen came in to cut the company into pieces. Anyone who thinks this OS ever had a chance is fooling themselves. At best they could have eked out a few more sales before winding hardware down with better marketing. The market was saturated when BB10 came out and there was no way in hell it was ever going to perform well enough to keep the company afloat. They missed the boat. Chen never mattered for BB10.

Posted via CB10

[someshkelkar3]

If they did samsung and apple level marketing for them the company would have been bankrupt before Chen came in to cut the company into pieces. Anyone who thinks this OS ever had a chance is fooling themselves. At best they could have eked out a few more sales before winding hardware down with better marketing. The market was saturated when BB10 came out and there was no way in hell it was ever going to perform well enough to keep the company afloat. They missed the boat. Chen never mattered for BB10.

Posted via CB10

Outsourcing the marketing and using print media for marketing is cheaper when compared to tv ads... people read newspaper... having your Z10 feature on the newspaper's front page for a week isnt very expensive and you get the same results as tv ads... getting your ads through facebook costs only 120$ per 1,00,000 views. Its not as expensive as you think to market a device if done properly.

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[CBCListener]

How BlackBerry blew it: The inside story - The Globe and Mail

This is the article I referenced as well. What the article doesn't mention is that Jacquie McNish, and perhaps the others on this article's byline, have a complete book from which this article was drawn, for those of you who can't get enough of this topic. Doubtful it shows in the U-S Amazon. Oh, surprise! There it is:

https://www.amazon.com/Losing-Signal...UvbUpU12760938

[app_Developer]

Do you have the details?

I posted them several pages ago. Analysis from Faucette and the first quarterly that they separated this issue from other commitments. Look at any quarter under liabilities.

[app_Developer]

Outsourcing the marketing and using print media for marketing is cheaper when compared to tv ads... people read newspaper... having your Z10 feature on the newspaper's front page for a week isnt very expensive and you get the same results as tv ads... getting your ads through facebook costs only 120$ per 1,00,000 views. Its not as expensive as you think to market a device if done properly.

Ok, lets do the math. How many FB impressions would you have to buy to sell 1,000 phones?

[anon(6125289)]

If only Microsoft had thought to advertise in the newspapers I'm sure windows phone wouldn't be dead.

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