[eshropshire]

Come on we all know BlackBerry 10 would have been amazing with app developer support. Had the BlackBerry 10 devices even launched with 10.2.1 it could have been different. I despise AT&T for their complete and utter botch of now releasing that update OTA immediately.

If BlackBerry had released BB10 in late 2011 or early 2012 at the quality level of BB10 2.1 I think the OS had a chance of gaining about 4-5% market share by 2014. That is nothing to sneeze at and would probably been enough to survive the major phone wars.

The problem was the Co-CEOs obsession with Apple. They wasted invaluable time developing the Playbook. Easily this cost them 12 months and probably 18 months of BB10 development time. The BS they gave about this helping them build BB10 was garbage. The only thing BlackBerry gained from the Playbook was big losses and a blackeye by all but the most loyal BlackBerry followers.

If the Playbook debacle had led to the hiring of a competent outsider as CEO then it might have had one positive outcome. Unfortunately they hired an insider and Thor was determined not to remake the company and remove all of the skeletons hidden by the Co-CEOs.

Unfortunately none of this happened and by 2013 only the most loyal BlackBerry mobile IT shops were around to evaluate BB10. Most of these people were already under fire from higher ups in their companies for staying BBOS. They year delay to release BB10 2.1 caused many to adopt a new mobile strategy.

My enterprise software company was one of the few to create BB10 apps to support our software. This work was done by a division I started to manage in 2015. I am very familiar with the app support and adoption of our apps. We never saw much adoption of our apps and by 2016 we were down to only on sizable customer. We pulled the plug on the apps in 2016.

[chain13]

Well, thank you, that's kind of you.

I found the Playbook open letter you were talking about (It's kind of funny): https://web.archive.org/web/20130408...02/you-win-rim

The BB10 SDK was a newer version of the Playbook stuff. (BB10 itself was really a newer version of PBOS).

So by the time the Z10 shipped, the SDK was better than Jamie Murai's experience. But it was still pretty rough. I think the sim did still require VMware. Maybe they had it working on VirtualBox also. I can't remember. That's not necessarily their fault, since they didn't have a desktop OS to host their own tools on (like Apple and Microsoft do)

200$ per 10 apps is crazy. No wonder devs moved away easily, when competitors gave a lot cheaper deals, with higher number of downloads/audients.

[Chuck Finley69]

If BlackBerry had released BB10 in late 2011 or early 2012 at the quality level of BB10 2.1 I think the OS had a chance of gaining about 4-5% market share by 2014. That is nothing to sneeze at and would probably been enough to survive the major phone wars.

The problem was the Co-CEOs obsession with Apple. They wasted invaluable time developing the Playbook. Easily this cost them 12 months and probably 18 months of BB10 development time. The BS they gave about this helping them build BB10 was garbage. The only thing BlackBerry gained from the Playbook was big losses and a blackeye by all but the most loyal BlackBerry followers.

If the Playbook debacle had led to the hiring of a competent outsider as CEO then it might have had one positive outcome. Unfortunately they hired an insider and Thor was determined not to remake the company and remove all of the skeletons hidden by the Co-CEOs.

Unfortunately none of this happened and by 2013 only the most loyal BlackBerry mobile IT shops were around to evaluate BB10. Most of these people were already under fire from higher ups in their companies for staying BBOS. They year delay to release BB10 2.1 caused many to adopt a new mobile strategy.

My enterprise software company was one of the few to create BB10 apps to support our software. This work was done by a division I started to manage in 2015. I am very familiar with the app support and adoption of our apps. We never saw much adoption of our apps and by 2016 we were down to only on sizable customer. We pulled the plug on the apps in 2016.

Market share and earlier rollout would have just delayed the inevitable. When consumers made choices to support Android/iOS, those seeds had been planted years before with the iTunes and Gmail type branded services. Apple, Google and Microsoft have all benefited from their entrenched revenue producing ecosystems.

With all that, even Microsoft couldn’t keep their mobile OS at the 4-5% market share rate. Nokia and it’s Symbian had same problem. Combining both companies mobile businesses couldn’t save the mobile divisions of Microsoft and Nokia even then.

BlackBerry only had BBOS data revenues. Once that revenue dried up, there were no other streams that somebody else had entrenched. Much like Microsoft is making it’s productivity software dominate Android/iOS, that’s BlackBerry only relevance, just in the current business lines.

Chen has done exactly what the founders should have done, just ten years later. BlackBerry Limited now would be the same company product lines, just the #1 or #2 player in each.

Chen’s strategy is similar to Sybase plan he followed, but his competition respects his strategy and is simply following his lead with far more cash resources like usual.

[bh7171]

Man I miss those days. New OSs, features, form factors, were coming out regularly. It was exciting. These days is all meh...

Yeah its quite interesting to see the lack of any comments on new launches. Over on AC Central hardly anything on the new S20's. Was not a whole lot on iMore with the 11 series iPhones either. All the new devices are a new chip and more lens for A LOT more $$. Just need to wait for those BOGO's and another launch and prices will plummet as usual. I am curious to see if "5G" that's really low spectrum 4G LTE at this point is a difference maker. Especially when carriers here in US are giving away iPhone 11's to switch and the 399 iPhone 9, and Pixel 4a are getting ready to drop.

[i_plod_an_dr_void]

Well, thank you, that's kind of you.

I found the Playbook open letter you were talking about (It's kind of funny): https://web.archive.org/web/20130408...02/you-win-rim

The BB10 SDK was a newer version of the Playbook stuff. (BB10 itself was really a newer version of PBOS).

So by the time the Z10 shipped, the SDK was better than Jamie Murai's experience. But it was still pretty rough. I think the sim did still require VMware. Maybe they had it working on VirtualBox also. I can't remember. That's not necessarily their fault, since they didn't have a desktop OS to host their own tools on (like Apple and Microsoft do)

I wasn't paying much attention to BlackBerry at all during those early years, but it must be said...installing their tools when bb10 came around didn't seem like rocket science, sure a multi-step (or several step) process but really nothing at all for a developer who was probably trained on Unix or Linux at some point. As for the mythical housewife who was hammering out apps...lol.. I missed that one completely.

He (the self-admitted rant) did a followup post shortly thereafter. After probably realizing that his blowing off of steam snowballed quickly throughout the smartphone developer and marketing world - something for some (maybe competitor) to pounce on and push to viral. Oddly enough, Microsoft contacted him personally to offer to hand hold him in installing tools for windows phone - they were obviously terrified he would be just as scathing to them (if I was to read Microsoft's thinking). anyhow.....here's a partial quote from that Same Guy who truth be told seemed to be already well reared in the Apple development ecosystem:

"....He ( Tyler head of the developer relations program at RIM) clearly understands the problems that RIM is facing with respect to attracting new developers, and knows what needs to be done to solve them. In speaking with some reporters who cover RIM, and who know Tyler, it seems like that’s the general consensus as well. In my opinion, it’s going to come down to execution, and as they say, the proof is in the pudding.

"As for me, I’m going to give the Playbook platform another shot. I’d like to give it a fair shake, and I’m not going to lie, a free Playbook is a pretty nice incentive to keep going. I’m also going to try out Windows Phone 7 development as well. After reading my post, Brandon Watson, head of Windows Phone developer experience, reached out to me to offer me some help getting started with WP7 development"

https://web.archive.org/web/20120711...ant-follow-up/

[chain13]

I wasn't paying much attention to BlackBerry at all during those early years, but it must be said...installing their tools when bb10 came around didn't seem like rocket science, sure a multi-step (or several step) process but really nothing at all for a developer who was probably trained on Unix or Linux at some point. As for the mythical housewife who was hammering out apps...lol.. I missed that one completely.

He (the self-admitted rant) did a followup post shortly thereafter. After probably realizing that his blowing off of steam snowballed quickly throughout the smartphone developer and marketing world - something for some (maybe competitor) to pounce on and push to viral. Oddly enough, Microsoft contacted him personally to offer to hand hold him in installing tools for windows phone - they were obviously terrified he would be just as scathing to them (if I was to read Microsoft's thinking). anyhow.....here's a partial quote from that Same Guy who truth be told seemed to be already well reared in the Apple development ecosystem:

"....He ( Tyler head of the developer relations program at RIM) clearly understands the problems that RIM is facing with respect to attracting new developers, and knows what needs to be done to solve them. In speaking with some reporters who cover RIM, and who know Tyler, it seems like that’s the general consensus as well. In my opinion, it’s going to come down to execution, and as they say, the proof is in the pudding.

"As for me, I’m going to give the Playbook platform another shot. I’d like to give it a fair shake, and I’m not going to lie, a free Playbook is a pretty nice incentive to keep going. I’m also going to try out Windows Phone 7 development as well. After reading my post, Brandon Watson, head of Windows Phone developer experience, reached out to me to offer me some help getting started with WP7 development"

https://web.archive.org/web/20120711...ant-follow-up/

In the end, developers naturaly would be attached to more reliable ecosystems who could make their apps reach wider audients/users where their efforts could be paid back (read: playstore and appstore)

[i_plod_an_dr_void]

200$ per 10 apps is crazy. No wonder devs moved away easily, when competitors gave a lot cheaper deals, with higher number of downloads/audients.

? What is your source for that figure? Was it BB10 apps, Playbook, or older BB operating systems? What period of time?
I've seen nothing but free since probably 2014 or ealier (don't remember exactly when)
What I saw was this:
Apple developer license - $99 per year
Apple developer enterprise licence - $299 per year (for developing and distributing in-house iOS apps)
Windows developer licence – $99 per year
Google developer licence – $25 one-off registration fee
Blackberry World developer licence - free
Amazon Appstore - (free? at least currently)

Also a :
+30% revenue off the top for most stores . Was BlackBerry World the same 30%? or was it also free too back then?. Payout dates varied, minimum thresholds applied to some stores before payout.

[chain13]

Yeah its quite interesting to see the lack of any comments on new launches. Over on AC Central hardly anything on the new S20's. Was not a whole lot on iMore with the 11 series iPhones either.

Excuse me, lack of any comments?? Android forums are not centralized into only android central like crackberry. I see there are a lot of excitements in Samsung members forum app. Also you can see on youtube almost every youtubers who came to galaxy unpackaged, have had their hands on the newest releases. MKBHD channel alone, with his Z flip hands on video, has reached 1.9M views and 7K comments. And his S20 video has almost 3M views and 10k comments. Both within less than a day.

[ppeters914]

MKBHD channel alone, with his Z flip hands on video, has reached 1.9M views and 7K comments. And his S20 video has almost 3M views and 10k comments. Both within less than a day.

[chain13]

? What is your source for that figure? Was it BB10 apps, Playbook, or older BB operating systems? What period of time?
I've seen nothing but free since probably 2014 or ealier (don't remember exactly when)
What I saw was this:
Apple developer license - $99 per year
Apple developer enterprise licence - $299 per year (for developing and distributing in-house iOS apps)
Windows developer licence – $99 per year
Google developer licence – $25 one-off registration fee
Blackberry World developer licence - free
Amazon Appstore - (free? at least currently)

Also a :
+30% revenue off the top for most stores . Was BlackBerry World the same 30%? or was it also free too back then?. Payout dates varied, minimum thresholds applied to some stores before payout.

It's from the new dev's open letter. That price is not license, it's like a rent to make your apps available in the store. In his letter he said that google charged only 25$ and apple 99$ for all apps. While RIM charged 200$ per 10 apps, and would charge the same for another 10 apps. Note that it was the price at that time for home developers, now it would be different. Consider paying 200$ per 10 apps for starter into ecosystem that has small number of users (put aside the unmature and unreliable tools/sdk), is pretty deal breaker for home developer from that time.

But like I stated above, in the end developers will just dive into 2 big players (playstore and appstore). Developers are human being trying to make money, and the most buyers are only on both sides.

[Thud Hardsmack]

Yeah its quite interesting to see the lack of any comments on new launches. Over on AC Central hardly anything on the new S20's. Was not a whole lot on iMore with the 11 series iPhones either. All the new devices are a new chip and more lens for A LOT more $$. Just need to wait for those BOGO's and another launch and prices will plummet as usual. I am curious to see if "5G" that's really low spectrum 4G LTE at this point is a difference maker. Especially when carriers here in US are giving away iPhone 11's to switch and the 399 iPhone 9, and Pixel 4a are getting ready to drop.

Question posed to Marques Brownlee on his WVFRM podcast: Have we hit peak smartphone? His reply: Yes, I believe we have.

There's definitely going to be one or two new things that haven't been tried yet such as folding phones, but for the most part things have been getting settled for a a little while now. Going year to year on an upgrade isn't much of an advancement anymore, and in some cases not even two years.

[howarmat]

? What is your source for that figure? Was it BB10 apps, Playbook, or older BB operating systems? What period of time?
I've seen nothing but free since probably 2014 or ealier (don't remember exactly when)
What I saw was this:
Apple developer license - $99 per year
Apple developer enterprise licence - $299 per year (for developing and distributing in-house iOS apps)
Windows developer licence – $99 per year
Google developer licence – $25 one-off registration fee
Blackberry World developer licence - free
Amazon Appstore - (free? at least currently)

Also a :
+30% revenue off the top for most stores . Was BlackBerry World the same 30%? or was it also free too back then?. Payout dates varied, minimum thresholds applied to some stores before payout.

it was $200 registration fee amd it got you 10 "free" app submissions. They later dropped it because they were desperate to get devs to work with BB10 and yes they also had 70/30 split

[conite]

Question posed to Marques Brownlee on his WVFRM podcast: Have we hit peak smartphone? His reply: Yes, I believe we have.

There's definitely going to be one or two new things that haven't been tried yet such as folding phones, but for the most part things have been getting settled for a a little while now. Going year to year on an upgrade isn't much of an advancement anymore, and in some cases not even two years.

This is what happens when any market coalesces around a market-driven, successful design that does the job.

[Thud Hardsmack]

Android forums are not centralized into only android central like crackberry. I see there are a lot of excitements in Samsung members forum app. Also you can see on youtube almost every youtubers who came to galaxy unpackaged, have had their hands on the newest releases. MKBHD channel alone, with his Z flip hands on video, has reached 1.9M views and 7K comments. And his S20 video has almost 3M views and 10k comments. Both within less than a day.

Views don't necessarily equate to excitement; how many of those watching were like me just wanting to know what the fuss is about? Also there's a good number watching to keep up with tech releases, plus he has his followers that don't miss an episode no matter what the subject is.

[Thud Hardsmack]

This is what happens when any market coalesces around a market-driven, successful design that does the job.

Madness - that's complacency. They should be trying to amaze us all with new shapes and whirlygigs and options and colors. My phone can't teleport to my hand from another room or make and deliver my coffee yet. BlackBerry will destroy the competition when they release a BB10 phone that makes coffee on the spot and turns into a car.

[chain13]

Views don't necessarily equate to excitement; how many of those watching were like me just wanting to know what the fuss is about? Also there's a good number watching to keep up with tech releases, plus he has his followers that don't miss an episode no matter what the subject is.

True, but it does equate to interest. I know most of them are not gonna buy every new releases anyway. But some of them are excited to try what's new on the table. Even some accounts in instagram already make some funny posts using that 100x superzoom camera.

[Thud Hardsmack]

True, but it does equate to interest. I know most of them are not gonna buy every new releases anyway. But some of them are excited to try what's new on the table. Even some accounts in instagram already make some funny posts using that 100x superzoom camera.

Oh yes definitely.

[eshropshire]

Market share and earlier rollout would have just delayed the inevitable. When consumers made choices to support Android/iOS, those seeds had been planted years before with the iTunes and Gmail type branded services. Apple, Google and Microsoft have all benefited from their entrenched revenue producing ecosystems.

With all that, even Microsoft couldn’t keep their mobile OS at the 4-5% market share rate. Nokia and it’s Symbian had same problem. Combining both companies mobile businesses couldn’t save the mobile divisions of Microsoft and Nokia even then.

BlackBerry only had BBOS data revenues. Once that revenue dried up, there were no other streams that somebody else had entrenched. Much like Microsoft is making it’s productivity software dominate Android/iOS, that’s BlackBerry only relevance, just in the current business lines.

Chen has done exactly what the founders should have done, just ten years later. BlackBerry Limited now would be the same company product lines, just the #1 or #2 player in each.

Chen’s strategy is similar to Sybase plan he followed, but his competition respects his strategy and is simply following his lead with far more cash resources like usual.

Microsoft's market share only passed 5% when they were selling sub $150 phones in developing markets. Microsoft quickly found out that this market did not buy apps or media. A key reason many developers like my division passed on Windows Mobile. We tracked this market very carefully yeara ago (2012-2015). If Microsoft had 4-5% of the higher end smartphone market in NA and Europe they would have attracted developers. We would have supported Win Mobile.

A big problem Microsoft had was there lack of fluid development. Almost every major release was pretty much a new system. Windows 6.5 to Win 7 no path forward. Win 7 to win 8 not path forward and from 8 to Win Mobile 10 was the first time a few phones were able to be upgraded. Plus Microsoft never had a good tablet strategy. Why they created RT instead of supporting Win mobile on tablets is beyond me. Balmer was so blinded by Apple's success and his belief that people would buy anything from Microsoft he never developed a coherent mobile strategy. In the process he wasn't many billions, I doubt we will ever know the exact amount, my guess is between 20 and 25 Billion dollars.

[bb10adopter111]

Microsoft's market share only passed 5% when they were selling sub $150 phones in developing markets. Microsoft quickly found out that this market did not buy apps or media. A key reason many developers like my division passed on Windows Mobile. We tracked this market very carefully yeara ago (2012-2015). If Microsoft had 4-5% of the higher end smartphone market in NA and Europe they would have attracted developers. We would have supported Win Mobile.

A big problem Microsoft had was there lack of fluid development. Almost every major release was pretty much a new system. Windows 6.5 to Win 7 no path forward. Win 7 to win 8 not path forward and from 8 to Win Mobile 10 was the first time a few phones were able to be upgraded. Plus Microsoft never had a good tablet strategy. Why they created RT instead of supporting Win mobile on tablets is beyond me. Balmer was so blinded by Apple's success and his belief that people would buy anything from Microsoft he never developed a coherent mobile strategy. In the process he wasn't many billions, I doubt we will ever know the exact amount, my guess is between 20 and 25 Billion dollars.

Good points. The challenge of hardware sales is that most of the money in Mobile is made by carriers and on the app stores, not the hardware, so Apple and Google are winners, and so are the carriers. Samsung makes money in enterprise with Knox and by selling in huge volumes.

No one is going to make money in the long run with sub-$400 commodity phones as their product.

Z10 = BB10 + VKB > iOS + Android

[early2bed]

Every debate about BlackBerry and the smartphone business centers on what smartphones used to be. Now the ecosystem doesn’t just include smartphones, tablets, apps, and cloud services but media streaming, speakers, automobile interfaces, wearables, home automation, payment systems - just about everything that the most powerful companies in tech are doing.

Who the heck just needs a smartphone? Smartphones ceased to be a business a decade ago. Apple’s smartphone supply chain is quarantined, right now, and their stock price hasn’t taken a hit, at all.

[Emaderton3]

Every debate about BlackBerry and the smartphone business centers on what smartphones used to be. Now the ecosystem doesn’t just include smartphones, tablets, apps, and cloud services but media streaming, speakers, automobile interfaces, wearables, home automation, payment systems - just about everything that the most powerful companies in tech are doing.

Who the heck just needs a smartphone? Smartphones ceased to be a business a decade ago.

Stop being so logical lol!

Seriously though, KEY phones can do all that with apps.

"But BB10 is more efficient and better!"

[app_Developer]

I wasn't paying much attention to BlackBerry at all during those early years, but it must be said...installing their tools when bb10 came around didn't seem like rocket science, sure a multi-step (or several step) process but really nothing at all for a developer who was probably trained on Unix or Linux at some point. As for the mythical housewife who was hammering out apps...lol.. I missed that one completely.

Yeah, of course we all know how to do it. I was just responding to the assertion that BB had great tools for developers. They didn't even have good tools or decent tools compared to the market as it existed in 2012/13.

You could make it work, and most of us would have if they had delivered the users or at least given us the ability to make something that we couldn't already do on Android or iOS.

but making the same app as we already had, but for a tiny amount of users, and using substandard tooling and dealing with an arrogant developer enablement team was just a hard sell.

[Rootbrian]

Most forget that android and iOS were also a mess when first released. PalmOS was too, however it was not a phone on first release.

Nothing is perfect upon first release, and is always subject to refinement later on.

From my BlackBerry Q5 on Freedom Mobile 3G HSPA+

[co4nd]

Good points. The challenge of hardware sales is that most of the money in Mobile is made by carriers and on the app stores, not the hardware, so Apple and Google are winners, and so are the carriers. Samsung makes money in enterprise with Knox and by selling in huge volumes.

No one is going to make money in the long run with sub-$400 commodity phones as their product.

Z10 = BB10 + VKB > iOS + Android

Apple makes money on hardware. And they still sell quite a few wifi only iPads. and they make money with apps and services, but they are probably the exception as they seem to be able to make money everywhere.

[i_plod_an_dr_void]

Yeah, of course we all know how to do it. I was just responding to the assertion that BB had great tools for developers. They didn't even have good tools or decent tools compared to the market as it existed in 2012/13.

You could make it work, and most of us would have if they had delivered the users or at least given us the ability to make something that we couldn't already do on Android or iOS.

but making the same app as we already had, but for a tiny amount of users, and using substandard tooling and dealing with an arrogant developer enablement team was just a hard sell.

On average, I think the BB tools looked pretty standard for the time, but they had an amazing variety of ways to develop...but the BB10 OS? it was awesome! Do I need pink lollipop designs on my hammer or the handle to be polished like a art sculpture? ...uh yeah that's probably a negative-eo...when the focus is on final product useability (ie the basic OS). Do I need stickers on the back of my laptop to work...yeah, probably not...but if you like that kind of thing go ahead and if it gets you going, knock yourselves out. Were they arrogant? Don't know, wasn't there, didn't deal with them. However no one was more arrogant at the time than Steve Jobs, there isn't even a distant second (from what I read and watched from a distance back then). His arrogance and the almost weird kind of odd cult like "holy" tone vibe to the company turned me off Apple completely at the time, but that's not why i didn't like the iPhone. But sure he was gifted with many skills - smart,worked hard, had a lot of talent working for him and made it a success, I can only respect and be amazed by that.