The audience isn't shrinking in absolute numbers.
The iPhone is the single most sold phone in the world.
Apple makes huge profits with their phones.
Keyboard phone users are a shrinking niche in terms of absolute numbers.
There isn't one single well selling keyboard phone in the market.
BlackBerry doesn't make any profits at all. Not even talking about huge.
One of the worst analogies I have read from you, and that's quite telling. There are no similarities considering the positioning in the market place between those 2 enterprises.
It's useless if there is no growth.
BlackBerry, even though they downsized so heavily, still aren't profitable.
And the phone division even less so.
It's great that they don't overproduce.
But currently, the level of demand BlackBerry has is far too low, compared to the level of demand they would need.
They can't get profitable with the numbers of devices they are currently selling.
But this might be business 102 already...
I surely am an expert in certain areas (like market analysis) and a clueless person when it comes down to other areas (like quantum mechanics).
So you can or cannot believe me.
As long as there won't be a huge shift in buyer's preference the Classic won't become a success.
Now, if that is an advice... I am actually not sure. I don't think that I gave you any advice. If anything, it's just an observation. Saying that the Classic was a bad product to be released, in the current market paradigm wasn't any kind of advice and to you.
I am also happy for you that you can afford all of the phones you want.
Usually I buy 2 high-end phones a year.
Which doesn't mean that I will willingly buy an overpriced Classic
(I am interested in a Passport 2 or the Visa though).
Theoretically I agree with you that those who absolutely need a toolbelt and a keyboard, won't be that price elastic.
Yes BlackBerry owns the keyboard market.
But even then, that wasn't enough to have the phone division profitable last year (or the year before, or the other one before that).
It therefore begs the question, if there are still enough buyers out there, who need that keyboard and toolbelt combination over anything else. The sale numbers from the last few years rather show that this isn't the case.
Which is part of BlackBerry's business model.
If that model isn't sustainable, then BlackBerry just has a worse model than said Android manufacturer.
As usual, if BlackBerry isn't competitive in the mid to long term with their hardware division, the hardware division will exit the market.
Yes, compared to other platforms BlackBerry lacks a lot of business specific apps in the app store already.
When it comes down to custom enterprise apps, BB10 is miles behind the competition.
To say that BlackBerry has no disadvantage here, shows the usual fanboyism.
And yes, it's BlackBerry's job to convince the devs. But you know what isn't convincing?
0.5% marketshare.
1:1 screen ratio, that you have to specifically design for, if the standard is completely somewhere else.
3.5 inch screens.
Specs that can't run the newest Android apps (which would be needed, because the native ecosystem is inexistant).
Did you miss the Playbook/Z10/Q10/Q5/Z30?
None were priced correctly and the market rejected all of them.
Some have been more overpriced (write off) than others though.
So if anything, you should doubt that those guys know it better than some people guessing on blogs.
Or people made a conscious choice to stay with a mature platform that actually has an ecosystem, an app store filled with apps and the correct price/performance ratio.
Which would include iOS and Android, while excluding BB10 for basically everyone.
You want a high-end touchscreen phone? Not from BlackBerry.
Further limiting the potential appeal to the 1.4 billion smartphone buyers last year.
You want a normally priced touchscreen phone with rather good specs (everything over a Z30)? Not from BlackBerry.
You want a BB10 Curve? Not from BlackBerry.
A BB10 Bold ? Nah, still no phone BlackBerry would produce.
If anything, the product portfolio and the bad pricing structure paired with the lack of an ecosystem/app store, explains why people don't want the new BlackBerry phones.
The lack of marketing is just something that doesn't make it better.
As always, your reading comprehension can't keep up with your imaginary wit.
I said that a niche manufacturer needs a premium over other manufacturers and then I said that BlackBerry can't justify the premium they are asking for. The concept isn't hard to understand.
The Classic (just like the Z30/Z10/Q10/Q5/PlayBook) is unjustifiably overpriced. And as was said a million times on these forums already: being sold out means nothing at all, for BlackBerry, when we don't know how many they sold. Compared to Apple, BlackBerry doesn't talk about the figures, and we all know why. Because they are effing bad.
BlackBerry wants to sell the Classic for a price that is reserved for phones of the highest end of the mid-tier (or high-end phones out of China), even though the Classic is an entry level phone. It won't work well. Simple as that. The Classic should have been the BB10 Curve, reasonably priced to get emerging markets on board and enterprise customers as well.
At 450$, it just won't happen.
Now onto the car analogy, which is yet another one of the worst I have read in a long time. Simply because you don't know your facts.
Bentleys are not sold to an ever shrinking niche. In the whole history of humanity, we have never seen more rich people than today. The luxury sector has never been bigger, than in this millennium.
Since around 1920, until today, Bentley got sold around 3 times and ended up in the VW conglomerate.
They were broke and useless quite a number of times. Since being part of Volkswagen though, they have become immensely successful.
Actually so successful that they had their best year since their foundation in 2013. IIRC they sold slightly over 10k cars.
Furthermore Bentley is a luxury car brand. BlackBerry on the contrary, is not a luxury brand and has never been one.
The ASP of a Bentley is in the 300k range.
What's a good BMW? 60k?
So the Bentley costs 6 times more than a "normal" premium car.
What's a BlackBerry Passport? 600$. What's an Android flagship? 600$.
I am sure that I could find more points why this analogy is bad, but the worst part of it all, is how clueless you are when it comes down to the subjects of your analogy. "Bentley is catering to a shrinking niche", must have been one of the most clueless comments I have read in a while.
To suppose that there is anything worthy of a comparison between BlackBerry and Bentley for this discussion, was the second funny thing.