[Emaderton3]

The whole marketing has been abysmal right from the start. You know it and I know it. No one I know was aware of them except when I have told them including my Canadian friends who have had BlackBerrys in the past. The red key2 sales comment was just an afterthought. They were selling them in the US right across the boarder so why not Canada, of all places. They are still selling them in Europe. My point is they did not understand where their most loyal customer base is. "Why did they need to bring it to more markets" you say. If they understood and wanted to foster interest and enthusiasm, they would have brought them there first. OK repurposed parts. But they have not been in tune with what the BlackBerry community really was. And by the way, CB was not the only part of that community.

So who was the market that they missed? BlackBerry users? Many of which didn't want to switch to a new OS! It just wasn't the pkb.

[anon(10622733)]

All TCL would need to do to create excitement and renewed enthusiasm would be to tell us that a new device is, in fact, coming. The fact that they haven't speaks volumes.

I'm the biggest BlackBerry-brand fan around, but at some point reality sets in.

^^^^ This

[anon(10622733)]

I'll never ever buy another new (as in future new device offerings) BlackBerry Phone either made by BlackBerry Ltd, or by a BlackBerry branded OEM. Why? Because nobody is going to make them.

[Chuck Finley69]

I'll never ever buy another new (as in future new device offerings) BlackBerry Phone either made by BlackBerry Ltd, or by a BlackBerry branded OEM. Why? Because nobody is going to make them.

LMAO

[conite]

How can they sell a pkb devise to people who don't know it exists. It is being sold online or it is in a store in a locked drawer with the demo device not set out. You are never going to find customers, even former pkb users that way. Just abysmal. This was from very early on.

Here is what I wrote regarding the "lack-of-marketing" fallacy in another thread:

BlackBerry Mobile had a built-in audience of 5-10 million BBOS/BB10 users, and could only sell them 1.5 million devices.

Even if they hoped to sell 3 million devices a year and spent $50 per device on advertising, that would be $150 million. That would not even make a dent.

A single 30 second commercial on Sunday Night Football is around $650k. Other prime time network dramas and sitcoms are around $200k per spot. A single half-page ad in a major newspaper is around $500k. It's $1 million to $3 million a month for a large Times Square billboard.

[i_plod_an_dr_void]

I'll never ever buy another new (as in future new device offerings) BlackBerry Phone either made by BlackBerry Ltd, or by a BlackBerry branded OEM. Why? Because nobody is going to make them.

So you're saying the next BlackBerry phone will have no body? Awesome....we'll just buy the bb10 image and put it on any phone we want and have it hardened on demand? Surely they'll still need to have a shell with a capacitive pkb for sure though. But I still totally want the BB embossing and tactile back. Will we buy them as 3-d like stickers?

[chain13]

I don't think the extra battery drain of 5G is worth the extra speed gain

In fact, 4G architecture enables lower power consumption both in backbone network and end user’s hand held. But poor implementation on user’s side making the battery life even worst than 3G. I don’t know how they’ll do it in 5G.

[Troy Tiscareno]

How can they sell a pkb devise to people who don't know it exists. It is being sold online or it is in a store in a locked drawer with the demo device not set out. You are never going to find customers, even former pkb users that way. Just abysmal. This was from very early on.

That's the fallacy. Tons of people know they exist - including many/most of the approximate 100M people who used BBOS phones in the past. The vast majority of those people simply don't want these phones. You may have a hard time accepting that truth, but it's the truth.

Let's just think about the 100M former BBOS users. Let's assume 1/3 of them are too old for a smartphone or otherwise aren't in the market - that's still 66M users who have daily-carried a PKB phone made by BB in their past, and know what typing on a PKB is like. Of that number, only 10M, or less than 1/6, moved to BB10, and roughly 1/5 of THOSE users eventually moved to BB Android.

The fact is that most users - even those with BB PKB experience - prioritize other things these days. Bigger screens, better quality cameras, better quality screens, phones that are price-competitive, etc. Only a tiny and rapidly-shrinking number are willing to pay near-flagship prices for a lower-middle-specced phone with a lousy camera because it has a PKB, and that group has shrunk past the point where it's profitable to serve that niche. That's GAME OVER for PKB phones from major OEMs, and effectively game over for the BB brand in the smartphone world.

We've given the financial realities of marketing costs, but more than anything, the PRODUCT has to be something that plenty of people want and are willing to pay for. Both BB and TCL could track ad-spends and see if they resulted in a spike in sales, but they didn't. That means spending more money wouldn't help. If the product was something that people just needed to see to want, sales would have spiked when ads were run - but they didn't.

As far as the phones not being displayed in the stores, BB wasn't moving enough devices to put a display phone in the shops, because a display phone is either a regular phone that has to be written off as a marketing expense, or it's a dummy shell. At the volume TCL was selling, neither option was financially viable, and, again, they can test by putting phones in a few stores and seeing if sales increase. If they don't, then they know it's not worth doing. Marketing is pretty sophisticated in the 21st Century, and when all the results tell you that people don't want the product, then spending more money marketing it doesn't make sense.

[Sigewif]

Here is what I wrote regarding the "lack-of-marketing" fallacy in another thread:

BlackBerry Mobile had a built-in audience of 5-10 million BBOS/BB10 users, and could only sell them 1.5 million devices.

Even if they hoped to sell 3 million devices a year and spent $50 per device on advertising, that would be $150 million. That would not even make a dent.

A single 30 second commercial on Sunday Night Football is around $650k. Other prime time network dramas and sitcoms are around $200k per spot. A single half-page ad in a major newspaper is around $500k. It's $1 million to $3 million a month for a large Times Square billboard.

The sales people who put this in at Best Buy did not need a million dollars to put the KEY2 LE in its slot. I am posting pics from each time I went back to see if they had put it in place. The first time I went in I asked the sales person about it and said I wanted to check out the device. They could not show it to me. They had one in a box in a locked drawer. He showed me the box!
This is the phone section of Best Buy where people go who are looking for new phones. This is the grass roots marketing they didn't carry through on. They didn't need a million $ for the sales force. This was the only place in Salem with only 4 or so stores in all of Oregon and probably 8 in the entire north west that carried them. Follow-up phone calls to check and see if the unit was set up would have done the job. If the store lacked a demo unit it could have been sent. There was not even a photo of it and look how small the print is saying what phone it is. I knew it was there because it said so on line. I was bummed. I wanted to check out the LE and couldn't. Why I say it was abysmal marketing.

[John Albert]

The sales people who put this in at Best Buy did not need a million dollars to put the KEY2 LE in its slot. I am posting pics from each time I went back to see if they had put it in place. The first time I went in I asked the sales person about it and said I wanted to check out the device. They could not show it to me. They had one in a box in a locked drawer. He showed me the box!
This is the phone section of Best Buy where people go who are looking for new phones. This is the grass roots marketing they didn't carry through on. They didn't need a million $ for the sales force. This was the only place in Salem with only 4 or so stores in all of Oregon and probably 8 in the entire north west that carried them. Follow-up phone calls to check and see if the unit was set up would have done the job. If the store lacked a demo unit it could have been sent. There was not even a photo of it and look how small the print is saying what phone it is. I knew it was there because it said so on line. I was bummed. I wanted to check out the LE and couldn't. Why I say it was abysmal marketing.

They say "coming soon".
You should wait.

[conite]

The sales people who put this in at Best Buy did not need a million dollars to put the KEY2 LE in its slot. I am posting pics from each time I went back to see if they had put it in place. The first time I went in I asked the sales person about it and said I wanted to check out the device. They could not show it to me. They had one in a box in a locked drawer. He showed me the box!
This is the phone section of Best Buy where people go who are looking for new phones. This is the grass roots marketing they didn't carry through on. They didn't need a million $ for the sales force. This was the only place in Salem with only 4 or so stores in all of Oregon and probably 8 in the entire north west that carried them. Follow-up phone calls to check and see if the unit was set up would have done the job. If the store lacked a demo unit it could have been sent. There was not even a photo of it and look how small the print is saying what phone it is. I knew it was there because it said so on line. I was bummed. I wanted to check out the LE and couldn't. Why I say it was abysmal marketing.

Now you're talking about sending out armies of employees to thousands upon thousands of retail stores around the globe? My goodness.

[kyamil010]

yes, those are not even close to what we looking for...i mean any other pkb devices not necessarily Uniherts

[Bbnivende]

Working BlackBerry phones are carried in Telus and Bell stores in my area .
No uptick in sales as far as I can tell.

[bb10adopter111]

The sales people who put this in at Best Buy did not need a million dollars to put the KEY2 LE in its slot. I am posting pics from each time I went back to see if they had put it in place. The first time I went in I asked the sales person about it and said I wanted to check out the device. They could not show it to me. They had one in a box in a locked drawer. He showed me the box!
This is the phone section of Best Buy where people go who are looking for new phones. This is the grass roots marketing they didn't carry through on. They didn't need a million $ for the sales force. This was the only place in Salem with only 4 or so stores in all of Oregon and probably 8 in the entire north west that carried them. Follow-up phone calls to check and see if the unit was set up would have done the job. If the store lacked a demo unit it could have been sent. There was not even a photo of it and look how small the print is saying what phone it is. I knew it was there because it said so on line. I was bummed. I wanted to check out the LE and couldn't. Why I say it was abysmal marketing.

You've got the causation equation backwards. Best Buy didn't care about the phones because they didn't sell very well, even in stores where they were displayed correctly. The poor marketing was the RESULT of weak demand, not the cause of it. Marketing communications cannot CREATE demand, it can only stimulate existing demand. Marketing dollars follow signs of demand. Big marketing campaigns are reserved for products with proven demand.

You won't see huge, sustained marketing campaigns for products that don't succeed. But it's backwards to think that the campaign creates the success. All it can do is amplify success for a product that people will want.

Certainly more and better marketing would have led to higher sales of KEY devices, but it likely would have also increased losses because the product didn't sell well even among people who knew a lot about it.

From the screen of my trusty Z10 using the exceptional BlackBerry VKB.

[Bbnivende]

Media at CES reported:

"TCL will still sell devices under the BlackBerry brand it licenses from that company. (Blackberry no longer makes hardware of its own.) TCL will also keep selling lower-end Alcatel devices through carriers.

The high-end phones will definitely be sold direct to consumers, but it's not clear if they will also be available through carriers — which remains a key way many Americans buy their phones."

TCL should be in politics. They can say something and nothing at the same time.

[Troy Tiscareno]

"TCL will still sell devices under the BlackBerry brand it licenses from that company."

Of course they will - they still have inventory to clear. But they used language to suggest that BB-branded phones would continue (to be made) without actually saying so definitively, because of course they aren't going to do that. They're just continuing to sell the devices they've already made.

[Chuck Finley69]

Of course they will - they still have inventory to clear. But they used language to suggest that BB-branded phones would continue (to be made) without actually saying so definitively, because of course they aren't going to do that. They're just continuing to sell the devices they've already made.

That’s such Android/iOS corporate behavior.

Oh wait, BlackBerry did that for almost four years with BB10 hardware and BB10 software even longer.

There’s BB10 fans that are currently arguing that BB10 is still being supported now.

[Bbnivende]

The press covering phones just find a different way of regurgitating the company press release before heading back to the hotel pool.

The lack of interest in pursuing the BlackBerry story is reflective of the market place. A niche audience.

[Chuck Finley69]

The press covering phones just find a different way of regurgitating the company press release before heading back to the hotel pool.

The lack of interest in pursuing the BlackBerry story is reflective of the market place. A niche audience.

Not really. The hotel pool and the weather is just that good when compared to wherever everyone has traveled from... LOL

[the_boon]

The sales people who put this in at Best Buy did not need a million dollars to put the KEY2 LE in its slot. I am posting pics from each time I went back to see if they had put it in place. The first time I went in I asked the sales person about it and said I wanted to check out the device. They could not show it to me. They had one in a box in a locked drawer. He showed me the box!
This is the phone section of Best Buy where people go who are looking for new phones. This is the grass roots marketing they didn't carry through on. They didn't need a million $ for the sales force. This was the only place in Salem with only 4 or so stores in all of Oregon and probably 8 in the entire north west that carried them. Follow-up phone calls to check and see if the unit was set up would have done the job. If the store lacked a demo unit it could have been sent. There was not even a photo of it and look how small the print is saying what phone it is. I knew it was there because it said so on line. I was bummed. I wanted to check out the LE and couldn't. Why I say it was abysmal marketing.

"Displaying" a phone like this is downright embarrassing.

Who the hell is gonna look at a label and say "hmm, ok, I'll buy it right now!"

[Chuck Finley69]

"Displaying" a phone like this is downright embarrassing.

Who the hell is gonna look at a label and say "hmm, ok, I'll buy it right now!"

The same BB fan that buys it either way. The store manager is simply afraid that customers would think store table display was left unchanged for the last six years and complain to HQ corporate

[Sigewif]

You've got the causation equation backwards. Best Buy didn't care about the phones because they didn't sell very well, even in stores where they were displayed correctly. The poor marketing was the RESULT of weak demand, not the cause of it. Marketing communications cannot CREATE demand, it can only stimulate existing demand. Marketing dollars follow signs of demand. Big marketing campaigns are reserved for products with proven demand.

You won't see huge, sustained marketing campaigns for products that don't succeed. But it's backwards to think that the campaign creates the success. All it can do is amplify success for a product that people will want.

Certainly more and better marketing would have led to higher sales of KEY devices, but it likely would have also increased losses because the product didn't sell well even among people who knew a lot about it.

From the screen of my trusty Z10 using the exceptional BlackBerry VKB.

I disagree. There is absolutely no way to prove that. They didn't sell well? Of course they didn't. How do you know which stores had them out and how many did just what this store did. Who would buy it unseen. Would you buy a vehicle you didn't get to see or test drive?
There is a guy in a chat I am in (living in another state) who said he sold 34 of them in a week recently. Earlier he had reported robust sales of them.
There was a display for it for at least 6 or 7 weeks, and it was not put out on the display. So are the nay sayers are going to run around and say they didn't sell well??
Someone like me comes in and they can't even show it to me. He said I had to commit to buying it before he would open it. In the mean time other cell phones were on display all around (slabs, all) and people could try them out. I was weighing up whether to buy it or a KEY2. I had my KEYone with me.

[Emaderton3]

I disagree. There is absolutely no way to prove that. They didn't sell well? Of course they didn't. How do you know which stores had them out and how many did just what this store did. Who would buy it unseen. Would you buy a vehicle you didn't get to see or test drive?
There is a guy in a chat I am in (living in another state) who said he sold 34 of them in a week recently. Earlier he had reported robust sales of them.
There was a display for it for at least 6 or 7 weeks, and it was not put out on the display. So are the nay sayers are going to run around and say they didn't sell well??
Someone like me comes in and they can't even show it to me. He said I had to commit to buying it before he would open it. In the mean time other cell phones were on display all around (slabs, all) and people could try them out. I was weighing up whether to buy it or a KEY2. I had my KEYone with me.

And how many iPhones and Samsungs were sold that week? Probably 10 times the amount.

[Sigewif]

Media at CES reported:

"TCL will still sell devices under the BlackBerry brand it licenses from that company. (Blackberry no longer makes hardware of its own.) TCL will also keep selling lower-end Alcatel devices through carriers.

The high-end phones will definitely be sold direct to consumers, but it's not clear if they will also be available through carriers — which remains a key way many Americans buy their phones."

TCL should be in politics. They can say something and nothing at the same time.

Do you have a reference for this? We are indeed getting unclear messages.

[Sigewif]

"Displaying" a phone like this is downright embarrassing.

Who the hell is gonna look at a label and say "hmm, ok, I'll buy it right now!"

I created this post last night because defending the store or the TCL sales rep who did not do a followup is absurd. I got more annoyed each time I went to the store. I should swing buy again because I haven't been there since the last pic. I think Best Buy may still be selling, at least, online.