[vaspat3]

I see a lot of nay sayers in here. We need to love our brand of choice. I am glad that Blackberry gave us one more PKB device! Since 2006 I have only owned pkb devices. I can't wait to own an Android phone with a Blackberry PKB!

Posted via CB10

[auditman]

i probably get one when its release.

[Alan Wei]

DTEK50/60 offered battery pack and silicon case so Keyone may include something

Not really sure but it would be a good promotion package for those die-hard BBers..

[keypad]

How is $549 not affordable mid-range? High end devices start around $700 (Samsung Galaxy S7 released at around $750, Motorola Z still retails for $699 and is already 6+ months old) if you don't include the usual suspects that seem to break the rules such as One Plus, Xiaomi, etc.

Posted via CB10

If you remember, Mr Chen said:

"Our corporate customers say they love our products but are looking for something priced nearer the $400 price point"

What more vital information do you need to accumulate my friend?

OnePlus 3 was acting kinda iffy, so I put my cash down on a DTEK50

[ZeroBarrier]

If you remember, Mr Chen said:

"Our corporate customers say they love our products but are looking for something priced nearer the $400 price point"

What more vital information do you need to accumulate my friend?

OnePlus 3 was acting kinda iffy, so I put my cash down on a DTEK50

TCL priced this at $550, so we can easily assume that they couldn't make it any cheaper without affecting the premium build quality and feel. So the question here is, what more information do you need?

Don't come here to whine and say, "BlackBerry f**ked up again and priced it too high"; because they have absolutely f**k all to do with pricing this device. Get that through your skull, please.

Posted via CB10

[Superfly_FR]

If you remember, Mr Chen said:

"Our corporate customers say they love our products but are looking for something priced nearer the $400 price point"
What more vital information do you need to accumulate my friend?

And then DTEK50.
And then, besides hopes, no luck.

It's not Chen who decides now how the device is positioned (hint : did you find a single tweet from him about the KEYone ?). It's not an heritage of former BB HW division.
It's a single, self financed enterprise - TCL - that pays for the right to print BlackBerry logo and gain access to exclusive technologies. THEY made their mix, choose their target, their price point, their objectives and finally, the mix of the forthcoming 3 devices (unconfirmed, see other thread). These guys are 100% autonomous on the commercial side of things.

Wake up, it's NOT BlackBerry anymore, it's BlackBerry Mobile.

[keypad]

TCL priced this at $550, so we can easily assume that they couldn't make it any cheaper without affecting the premium build quality and feel. So the question here is, what more information do you need?

Don't come here to whine and say, "BlackBerry f**ked up again and priced it too high"; because they have absolutely f**k all to do with pricing this device. Get that through your skull, please.

Posted via CB10

I'm sorry if I touched a raw nerve, I in no way ment to shake your mental person space.

Okay, let's cut to the chase.

1. The pubic or corporate entities for that matter, do not care one iota who manufacturers and prices the KEYone.

2. BlackBerry is licensing their name to TCL/ BlackBerry Mobile and although not branded on the front of the handset, do have the famous BlackBerry visual logo on the back of the unit.

3. All potential customers who see this handset will refer to it as #TheNewBlackBerry because it is.

It is not the #TCLKEYone or the #AlcatelKEYone

4. The £499/$549 launch price point, is to high for a instant purchase from most of the general public and history has made that a clear prediction already, you can have a counter opinion if you so choose.

5. If sales of the KEYone are poor in 2017, you can kiss goodbye to the future of BlackBerry Mobile hardware.

I look forward to debating with you again in the near future

OnePlus 3 was acting kinda iffy, so I put my cash down on a DTEK50

[Superfly_FR]

is to high for a instant purchase from most of the general public

Ah, glad you finally nailed it ! Good.
It's not for most of the general public, never was, never will.

If sales of the KEYone are poor in 2017,

Define "poor"; can you ? What's the goal/meaning of this first device, for TCL ?
Is it a volume objective, a margin objective, an image objective, a combination of them ?
What were the constraints ? Were they forced to make a PKB ?

[keypad]

Ah, glad you finally nailed it ! Good.
It's not for most of the general public, never was, never will.


Define "poor"; can you ? What's the goal/meaning of this first device, for TCL ?
Is it a volume objective, a margin objective, an image objective, a combination of them ?
What were the constraints ? Were they forced to make a PKB ?

I can answer this very simply:

If BlackBerry Mobile, could not produce a physical Qwerty keypad device for under £450/$500, on the day of launch, they should not have produced an android physical Qwerty device after the PRIV at all.

OnePlus 3 was acting kinda iffy, so I put my cash down on a DTEK50

[Superfly_FR]

Sorry but there's no answer here, you just repeat what you would like it to be.
TCL is on the long haul perspective, starting with a first year to set up and fine tune their strategy.
They won't throw money by the windows (Chinese are generally very efficient businessmen, you know) but they could perfectly engage a strategy with something else in mind than volume.
As an example : they consider BlackBerry is an iconic brand, sorry, Iconic with capital I.
And they want to capitalize on that, remind professional what was the Bold, what was the social differentiator.

Do you believe their #1 priority action would be :
1. Sell a low-cost / low margin at the risk to be considered as "yet another Chinese box pusher" (never was BB target)?
2. Sell a high cost / low margin (re: volume) top specs dedicated to nerds and gamers (never was BB target)?
3. Sell a mid-cost+ / medium+ margin device to people that are probably already ready to buy and fits the target naturally ?

The fact that they can or can't isn't the problem; they probably can.
But why would they do that is the question to ask.

I for one was expecting/hoping a selling price of €550, so I missed it by 10% ... is that a no-go ? Surely not, if I compare to my other professional charges, that's not even pens and rubber.

[keyboardweeb]

Loyalists (including myself) need to realize this device was not built or priced for them.

I completely disagree. It was built and priced specifically for loyalists. Moreover, it's for a specific subset of us loyalists: the ones still carrying BB10 or BBOS handsets, and especially Classic users (such as myself).

We are after all the only group who will tolerate the pricing at this level of spec. The appeal of the pkb drops sharply the farther away you get from current BlackBerry users, starting with BlackBerry vkb users. Former BlackBerry users who adapted to vkb and have been using mainstream flagships are likely to be unwilling to trade performance for pkb. Others will look at it, and maybe see the pkb as a curiosity, but it won't be something they will pay a premium for, they'll buy the cheaper phone with the same SoC, or pay a smaller premium for last year's flagship, or a bit more than that for an iphone 7.

So, we're polar opposites here: the KeyOne is for US. I may be ******** and moaning about the price now but when the time comes I'm like 90% certain I'll be carrying one of these things, because it's for me, the guy that hates vkb.

[keypad]

Sorry but there's no answer here, you just repeat what you would like it to be.
TCL is on the long haul perspective, starting with a first year to set up and fine tune their strategy.
They won't throw money by the windows (Chinese are generally very efficient businessmen, you know) but they could perfectly engage a strategy with something else in mind than volume.
As an example : they consider BlackBerry is an iconic brand, sorry, Iconic with capital I.
And they want to capitalize on that, remind professional what was the Bold, what was the social differentiator.

Do you believe their #1 priority action would be :
1. Sell a low-cost / low margin at the risk to be considered as "yet another Chinese box pusher" (never was BB target)?
2. Sell a high cost / low margin (re: volume) top specs dedicated to nerds and gamers (never was BB target)?
3. Sell a mid-cost+ / medium+ margin device to people that are probably already ready to buy and fits the target naturally ?

The fact that they can or can't isn't the problem; they probably can.
But why would they do that is the question to ask.

I for one was expecting/hoping a selling price of €550, so I missed it by 10% ... is that a no-go ? Surely not, if I compare to my other professional charges, that's not even pens and rubber.

I'm a little confused with your response but I do really like what you said here:

"Chinese are generally very efficient businessmen, you know) but they could perfectly engage a strategy with something else in mind than volume.
As an example : they consider BlackBerry is an iconic brand, sorry, Iconic with capital I.
And they want to capitalize on that, remind professional what was the Bold, what was the social differentiator."

I'm still left with a feeling of deja vu and going round in circles regarding BlackBerry Mobiles hardware future.

Look, you are right.

Nobody (Incuding me) has all the answers, just opinions.

All I can do is call it how I see it.



OnePlus 3 was acting kinda iffy, so I put my cash down on a DTEK50

[madmax12345]

Ill probably wait till black friday of this year, price should drop to $399, which i think is fair

[markmall]

And then DTEK50.
And then, besides hopes, no luck.

It's not Chen who decides now how the device is positioned (hint : did you find a single tweet from him about the KEYone ?). It's not an heritage of former BB HW division.
It's a single, self financed enterprise - TCL - that pays for the right to print BlackBerry logo and gain access to exclusive technologies. THEY made their mix, choose their target, their price point, their objectives and finally, the mix of the forthcoming 3 devices (unconfirmed, see other thread). These guys are 100% autonomous on the commercial side of things.

Wake up, it's NOT BlackBerry anymore, it's BlackBerry Mobile.

You have no idea what their licensing agreement says. It could be 100 pages and give BlackBerry all sorts of veto rights or outright decisions to make.

Why do Chen/BlackBerry defenders always act like they know things and try to bully people when really they are just speculating?

Posted via CB10

[krazyatom]

Ill probably wait till black friday of this year, price should drop to $399, which i think is fair

Yes but you have to wait like 6 months. Priv is still selling for like $300.

[madmax12345]

Yes but you have to wait like 6 months. Priv is still selling for like $300.

Yeah I can wait, Its like monk patience training, only more difficult

[iUser]

I honestly do not understand why people continue to compare this phone to others with the same SoC. There is SO many things that go into making a phone and determining the cost of that phone, more than just what SoC it has. The fact of the matter, in my opinion, is that they KEYone has an amazing piece of technology in it's keyboard. I don't think there is any denying that. The fact that you can type, use it as a mouse with its capacitive qualities, and apply 52 shortcuts to it is amazing and a marvel. Now, whether or not that makes you want to buy it is up to the individual. To me though, that is a HUGE differentiator. To compare this phone to others solely based on its SoC seems foolish. That is not taking into consideration that it will have the security that BlackBerry Android provides as well. At the end of the day I think its solely subjective to the individual as to whether or not they want to shell out $550 for the phone or not. I for one will. I am glad to see BlackBerry with the keyboard in a candy bar format. I am glad that they worked on one aspect of BlackBerry of old that I missed in its battery life. Looking forward to April now.

Hmm, it is not that foolish to compare things such as phones though. We are reading and writing opinions just because we do want to keep BlackBerry existing without silly ways such as "shell your money out and give it away to BlackBerry just because".

We want to keep BlackBerry existing by wanting to buy its products and also that some other people out there want to give BlackBerry products a try.

But we - apparently some of us Crackberrians - think that KEYone will not make this wish come true if it has its current specs and price. Some of us will buy it right of the shelf on release day. Some will wait. And people out there won't even give it a try. Then as time goes, the price will go down rapidly just because people don't buy it. If people don't buy it, how should BlackBerry gain some market share it desperately requires?

Posted through my  Z30

[iUser]

I see a lot of nay sayers in here. We need to love our brand of choice. I am glad that Blackberry gave us one more PKB device! Since 2006 I have only owned pkb devices. I can't wait to own an Android phone with a Blackberry PKB!

Posted via CB10

Afaik there aren't much nay sayers, they basically just said "the price is not good for that specs". I think most of so called nay sayers will just wait till TCL want to clean up their warehouses and shoot the release price down.

I do love choices, but not a single brand of choice. If Samsung could create a phone with Vanilla Droid like Pixel and PKB like KEYone (never touched it yet but I believe) , I'd buy it right away. Nah, just kidding, they simply can't unless they had acquired BlackBerry

Posted through my  Z30

[crackbb10]

TCL has priced this as low as possible. Guaranteed.

I think so too.

Posted via CB10

[cbvinh]

Could we possibly say that other than the processor and perhaps another gig of RAM, the KEYone pretty much hit everything on most people's wishlist, feature-wise? If in six months to a year, KEYtwo has the most recent processor and another gig, would the price be justified then? Maybe even too cheap with the other flagships going for a lot more?

I'm thinking the metric BlackBerry Mobile will be looking at isn't how many KEYone's are sold, but how much profit they make. It's a given that the price will eventually go down. First, they sell X at $549, then Y at $500, Z at $450, etc. until stock is depleted (or not). At the end of the day, how much profit is that? Is it enough to roll into a KEYtwo, which hopefully will be the same, just upgraded internals, instead of a new form factor, which eliminates sunk costs in developing KEYone? Unsold KEYone's will be recycled into making KEYtwo's.

[murphy_thom]

This is the point though. They KNOW they have to be competitive in the slab area, but arent doing the same in PKB... well, that is why no one buys PKB anymore. Just because you make the only one it doesnt mean you can charge ANY price. You can CHARGE, and I would pay, a PREMIUM for the PKB... if all the other specs were decent... you cant NOT have good specs AND charge a premium.

BTW, the product page is up but it doesnt have any prices. I do LOVE the 2tb sd card option... which is a great addition

I don't think they are charging a premium for the product. If they put the top of the line specs in the unit and charged $799 ( like top of the line IPhone and android phoned) everyone would be going ballistic. This phone is not aimed for everyone.

Posted via CB10

[murphy_thom]

Hmm, it is not that foolish to compare things such as phones though. We are reading and writing opinions just because we do want to keep BlackBerry existing without silly ways such as "shell your money out and give it away to BlackBerry just because".

We want to keep BlackBerry existing by wanting to buy its products and also that some other people out there want to give BlackBerry products a try.

But we - apparently some of us Crackberrians - think that KEYone will not make this wish come true if it has its current specs and price. Some of us will buy it right of the shelf on release day. Some will wait. And people out there won't even give it a try. Then as time goes, the price will go down rapidly just because people don't buy it. If people don't buy it, how should BlackBerry gain some market share it desperately requires?

Posted through my  Z30

The problem is we are not comparing apples to apples ( no pun intended). KEYone is not for everyone and it is not intended to be for everyone. It's a niche product aimed at a niche market. IMO if they market the phone properly they can educate the masses that BlackBerry is still in business and follow up in the fall with 2-3 slabs in different specs and price points.

Posted via CB10

[anon(10101748)]

I completely disagree. It was built and priced specifically for loyalists. Moreover, it's for a specific subset of us loyalists: the ones still carrying BB10 or BBOS handsets, and especially Classic users (such as myself).

We are after all the only group who will tolerate the pricing at this level of spec. The appeal of the pkb drops sharply the farther away you get from current BlackBerry users, starting with BlackBerry vkb users. Former BlackBerry users who adapted to vkb and have been using mainstream flagships are likely to be unwilling to trade performance for pkb. Others will look at it, and maybe see the pkb as a curiosity, but it won't be something they will pay a premium for, they'll buy the cheaper phone with the same SoC, or pay a smaller premium for last year's flagship, or a bit more than that for an iphone 7.

So, we're polar opposites here: the KeyOne is for US. I may be ******** and moaning about the price now but when the time comes I'm like 90% certain I'll be carrying one of these things, because it's for me, the guy that hates vkb.

The Enterprise Play here is so obvious and continues to be ignored. The most tolerant will be those who save with a price starting at $549 and get a discount in bulk.

I work for a Hospital that is also an Academic Institution. We are issued a choice of iPhones that range from 5s to 6s pending where in cycle you are in or if you've needed a replacement or a Samsung Galaxy 5 or 6 under same circumstances. The KEYone will easily now be swiftly entered in a replacement as every single phone is damaged or up for renewal because $549 KEYone in bulk is substantially cheaper than iPhone 7 and Galaxy 7 on the cycle track.

With 15,000+ employees the price point, specs, and security is exactly spot on. Again, I use a personal iPhone 7 and a work issued iPhone 6s. I have nothing to gain by my opinion. I believe the PRIV was not cheap enough $$$ wise to entice, the DTEK50 nor the DTEK60 at launch appealed enough to large scale Enterprise.

People who live in a world of locked down devices by an MDM will jump at this device. Once flipped this is a potential 1.5 to 3.0 million dollar save over time for Organizations that lived off Bolds.

[u4ria]

The Enterprise Play here is so obvious and continues to be ignored. The most tolerant will be those who save with a price starting at $549 and get a discount in bulk.

I work for a Hospital that is also an Academic Institution. We are issued a choice of iPhones that range from 5s to 6s pending where in cycle you are in or if you've needed a replacement or a Samsung Galaxy 5 or 6 under same circumstances. The KEYone will easily now be swiftly entered in a replacement as every single phone is damaged or up for renewal because $549 KEYone in bulk is substantially cheaper than iPhone 7 and Galaxy 7 on the cycle track.

With 15,000+ employees the price point, specs, and security is exactly spot on. Again, I use a personal iPhone 7 and a work issued iPhone 6s. I have nothing to gain by my opinion. I believe the PRIV was not cheap enough $$$ wise to entice, the DTEK50 nor the DTEK60 at launch appealed enough to large scale Enterprise.

People who live in a world of locked down devices by an MDM will jump at this device. Once flipped this is a potential 1.5 to 3.0 million dollar save over time for Organizations that lived off Bolds.

That's assuming Apple or Samsung doesn't undercut any pricing that BlackBerry Mobile comes in with. Those two can afford to take a loss on devices to maintain or gain marketshare at the expense of a competitor. It wouldn't be the first or last time that it's been done.

BlackBerry Mobile (TCL) can't take a loss on this device. If they do, then that would contradict the argument of them pricing it as low as they could. We know Apple and Samsung have way deeper pockets to be able to take loss leaders just to get their hands on other things like iPads or anything else they can sell to the client.

Losing $10 Million to kill off a competitor is a good strategy if it results in one less competitor in your space. Especially if your revenues are topping $40 Billion/quarter.

[anon(10101748)]

That's assuming Apple or Samsung doesn't undercut any pricing that BlackBerry Mobile comes in with. Those two can afford to take a loss on devices to maintain or gain marketshare at the expense of a competitor. It wouldn't be the first or last time that it's been done.

BlackBerry Mobile (TCL) can't take a loss on this device. If they do, then that would contradict the argument of them pricing it as low as they could. We know Apple and Samsung have way deeper pockets to be able to take loss leaders just to get their hands on other things like iPads or anything else they can sell to the client.

Losing $10 Million to kill off a competitor is a good strategy if it results in one less competitor in your space. Especially if your revenues are topping $40 Billion/quarter.

Couldn't agree more...if they care more about killing off a competitor than money. Because it's kind of wash for Apple and Samsung. Just example numbers but it would be like lowering your prices a million and making three million to net out two million versus just losing one million of your three and netting out at two million. It's pricing versus volume. But I completely understand what you mean. And the numbers at stake are potentially much larger obviously.