The article was about TCL's market share, not BB's.
I'm not sure where the data is from, but I always thought it sold fairly well for a BlackBerry. I know for a fact TCL phones are selling well outside the US, especially in China.
I've said this before and I'll say it again : The name BlackBerry is toxic in the USA. It's not going to sell there. TCL is almost wasting their time, money and effort to get any traction there.
CNET hates anything that isn't iPhone, number 1, and number 2, it is way too early in the "brand resuscitation" process to tell. The article gives no information at all on TCL's many, many other products across a huge spectrum, and/or how their TV's in China, for example, are selling. It does even note that OVERALL smartphone sales in the US are down 2 percent, aka, across the board, just in general.
I would say the jury is out, it may well be that the experiment does not work out for them, but much too early. BB Motion was only just released. Also, KeyOne demand far exceeded supply early on, it also may have been that TCL was treating this as a test run for future BB launches.
At this stage, this early in the game, I really fail to see the purpose of this article. It's not telling of anything. No trend, nothing. I can't even classify it as relevant news as TCL in general isn't particularly important in the US market at the moment.
Is this any surprise? CNET doesn't give a crap if it's not concerning Apple and to a slightly lesser degree Samsung. Ironically, there idiots were carrying BlackBerries not too long ago.
I'm not sure where the data is from, but I always thought it sold fairly well for a BlackBerry. I know for a fact TCL phones are selling well outside the US, especially in China.
At this stage, this early in the game, I really fail to see the purpose of this article. It's not telling of anything. No trend, nothing. I can't even classify it as relevant news as TCL in general isn't particularly important in the US market at the moment.
this is exactly what I was thinking. way too early to tell, cnet is just blowing smoke
"A TCL spokesman declined to comment on the sales estimates, but noted that customer response and volumes have exceeded "our high expectations."
exceeding their MFG keyboard capability? you can only sell what you make... if the shelf is empty (like pee-ka-po amazon/best buy you need to hunt K1 like duck), you exceeding highest expectation (bottle neck?). As for CNet, don't they sponsered by some brand (like CB)?
The KEYᵒⁿᵉ was launched in February and it was TCL's first release of their own Blackberry phone. For an initial run with true marketing of a Blackberry phone it's not unheard of that it's not blown up like an iPhone. They have yet to establish the widespread understanding that Blackberry phones now run Android and are a viable option today. I would think if we revisit this on another year it's very well possible we will see more favorable statistics.
I would like to point out that they did say that the KEYᵒⁿᵉ did sell better than any Blackberry phone in history did they not? Or was that only at launch?
At this stage, this early in the game, I really fail to see the purpose of this article. It's not telling of anything. No trend, nothing. I can't even classify it as relevant news as TCL in general isn't particularly important in the US market at the moment.
It's just the same BlackBerry 'hate' (not to say Roger is hating here. He's done some great BB reporting the past and his reason for this particular post is pretty well founded, more on that below) that has been going on for years continued. Roger talks about the BlackBerry curse, the curse is that some of the the media likes to use them as a punching bag for quick hits.
The brand is an easy target and headline for anyone in the tech industry. Slow news day, take a shot at BlackBerry. Need to make a 'failed business' comparison, take a shot at BlackBerry. Feeling nostalgic, take a trip down memory lane and take a shot at BlackBerry.
The analytics report is interesting and I certainly don't blame Roger for highlighting it, it is interesting to see Motorola rise and ZTE take over TCL, but the BlackBerry storyline there hasn't fully gestated. One BlackBerry device in the market is certainly not enough to see how the market will play out. It certainly took more than one device for Motorola to show signs of life again.
https://www.strategyanalytics.com/st...ion-in-q3-2017
PS: The report is based on data from North America only. You know, hence the report being called "North America Smartphone Vendor & OS Market Share by Country: Q3 2017"
North America smartphone shipments dipped -2% annually in Q3 2017. Apple held top spot, but its volumes softened due to increased competition. Meanwhile, ZTE and Motorola performed well in the quarter as they expanded their distribution channels. This report contains quarterly smartphone shipments and marketshare for the top 20 vendors and top 5 operating systems in the United States and Canada for Q3 2017. The report also contains historical data for North America from 2007 to Q3 2017.
But how many units did the put out at launch? 100 handsets? Lol you will sell out of that
If that was truly the case then bb10 was a smashing success in orders of magnitude (Well except to cnet - always pining for a BlackBerry funeral as far as I can recall) and it would still securely be the go to phone os for Blackberry.
CNET hates anything that isn't iPhone, number 1, and number 2, it is way too early in the "brand resuscitation" process to tell. The article gives no information at all on TCL's many, many other products across a huge spectrum, and/or how their TV's in China, for example, are selling. It does even note that OVERALL smartphone sales in the US are down 2 percent, aka, across the board, just in general.
I would say the jury is out, it may well be that the experiment does not work out for them, but much too early. BB Motion was only just released. Also, KeyOne demand far exceeded supply early on, it also may have been that TCL was treating this as a test run for future BB launches.
Posted via CB10
I follow CNET on Twitter (that's how I came across the article) and they have done their fair share of positive articles on BlackBerry as well. I've also seen many articles they have done saying not so nice things about Apple ... so your conclusion that they hate anything that isn't an IPhone is wrong. Believe it or not, everyone who writes an article that says something negative about BlackBerry is not a "hater" of some sort with a predetermined dislike for BlackBerry. The truth is that BlackBerry is a company that has had a well publicized fall from grace and you need to accept that writers may choose to reference that in their articles, it doesn't make them wrong.
Anyway, I agree with you that the jury is still out. This article simply points out that TCL's market share for phones has dropped, which is surprising considering that they created an entire new line of phones (BlackBerry Mobile) that they say has surpassed their expectations as far as sales go. If they say it surpassed their expectations, then I assumed it raised their overall mobile unit sales considering it was a new phone for them that didn't replace an existing phone. Now that I know overall sales went down for TCL, it tells me one of the following probably happenned; Alcatel sales went down for some reason, KEYone expectations were very low, TCL is purposely misleading the public about KEYone sales, or maybe Motorola sales were just that much better than KEYone sales. Either way, it's not good sign ... but like you said, it's still early. I wouldn't however just dismiss the article as being bias against BlackBerry (other than the title is meant to be click-bait).
When a spokesman says something as vague as “exceeded our expectations” you have to take that with a massive grain of salt. People say stuff like that all the time. Without real numbers it’s meaningless.