[Bonsaibo]

I've been playing with the latest BBM on Android and I think it looks pretty good, they did a nice job (but it took some time to get there). The iOS version is much better as well though not as well skinned as Android now (or Windows so I've read).

And I personally don't think Chen is going to dump BB10 entirely if he can help it, but try to reposition it for enterprise where end to end security and confidentiality is the #1 priority. I know one person who works at a high level in government negotiating uber confidential contracts and I think his phone has about as many apps as President Obama's, lol.

If they get the BlackBerry Experience (software) right, then the next logical step is porting over hardware elements. I know you're no longer a fan of pkb, but I think it has its own place in the market as well. A Samsung slider device with touch capacitive pkb is the next logical step to complete the picture after software. BB can enter into a licensing agreement / patent sharing / whatever agreement with them. It will still be a Samsung device with BlackBerry elements. Totally think it would find its own market. Not gonna sell in the tens of millions per quarter, but would add yet another (distinctive) form factor to Samsung's current lineup. The sales of the S6 have been disappointing and I think that's because a lot of their base didn't see a huge jump from the S5. I think the same thing is going to happen with Apple in a few product iterations of the iPhone now that they've finally upsized their lineup. Hence acquisitions like Beats, partnering with IBM to shore up enterprise share and beating the Healthkit drum so loudly. And the Apple Watch, of course.

What I wonder is if Samsung begins to peak as does ios, could a new player begin to steal market share? In 2007 the iPhone began to steal huge market share from BlackBerry. Could another "new" player supplant ios and Android? Just wondering.

[deadcowboy]

Z10 and Z30 were both mid-range at best at launch.

Posted via CB10

Exactly. We haven't seen a really well-specced phone from BBRY except for the Passport--and that was a horrible mistake as far as build quality, quality control, engineering, and keyboard design.

The new Slider looks to be the only legitimately exciting phone that BlackBerry has produced in ages (for the non-bb10 fan). The Passport was a good idea, but a total miscalculation in every respect.

Posted via CB10

[anon(9353145)]

What I wonder is if Samsung begins to peak as does ios, could a new player begin to steal market share? In 2007 the iPhone began to steal huge market share from BlackBerry. Could another "new" player supplant ios and Android? Just wondering.

I can't see a new platform stealing market share, not in mobile anyway. Samsung's threat is from other Android manufacturers who can make cheaper handsets with the same specs. And I can't see Apple flipping the table on Android, in fact their marketshare may dwindle slightly in the face of Windows Phone (though not much I suspect).

The only thing that's going to change things is the next disruptive tech, imho. It will happen, but who knows when and what. In the meantime I'm sure Microsoft and BlackBerry will survive in some form, but they're certainly not going to overtake the Apple / Google duopoly. Too well entrenched at this point.

[Troy Tiscareno]

What I wonder is if Samsung begins to peak as does ios, could a new player begin to steal market share? In 2007 the iPhone began to steal huge market share from BlackBerry. Could another "new" player supplant ios and Android? Just wondering.

The battle isn't, and hasn't been, about the OS for at least 5 years - it's a battle of ecosystems. In order to steal any significant marketshare from iOS and Android, you'd need a superior ecosystem - apps, services, companion devices (tablets, smartwatches, headware, etc.), and aftermarket accessories.

Windows and MacOS are the two leaders in desktops and have been for 20+ years - other things have come and gone (and Linux flavors have come and stayed) but nothing has made significant inroads on the desktop. Why? Because they lack ecosystems. Linux survives because it does in fact have an ecosystem, but it's still not nearly as robust as MS or Apple's, and thus only owns a single-digit share of the market.

Mobile is just the same, except it's Android and iOS, with WinPhone in Linux's "first place of the also-rans" spot. WinPhone would have failed already with a more typical company owning it, but MS has massive cash reserves and revenues and can afford to iterate until they get traction, which I expect they'll finally start to get with Win 10. But no 4th Place OS has ever survived long - there simply isn't going to be enough developer interest in a niche platform, and you can see this with BB10, as more developers abandon it every day. It has become a Zombie OS - not quite dead, but not really alive either.

[Soulstream]

What I wonder is if Samsung begins to peak as does ios, could a new player begin to steal market share? In 2007 the iPhone began to steal huge market share from BlackBerry. Could another "new" player supplant ios and Android? Just wondering.

Samsung is not a platform, Android is. Samsung doing worse doesn't always mean Android doing worse.

Think of Windows on PCs, because Android operates on the same market principle that Windows does. Windows can't die because of the app ecosystem that it has and competing platforms struggle.

Edit: dammit, Troy beat me to it and has a better and more complete answer to what I wanted to say.

[donnation]

Neither were high end phones and the Z10 had technical issues too.

Posted via CB10

I'll give you the Z10 (because of its problems) but how was the Z30 not a high end phone at the time of its launch?

[Bbnivende]

I'll give you the Z10 (because of its problems) but how was the Z30 not a high end phone at the time of its launch?

Mainly the screen. Passport has a high end screen . Do you see the difference? I can.

The design lacks something. For want of a better term the device has no charisma.

Posted via CB10

[MarsupilamiX]

I'll give you the Z10 (because of its problems) but how was the Z30 not a high end phone at the time of its launch?

The screen was 2 generations behind the other 700$ phones on the market and the CPU/GPU had the same problem.
The Z30, just like the Z10, was a mid range phone, sold for a high-end price tag.

Comparatively 700$ Android phones were "leap frogging" the Z30 in terms of specs and benchmarks.
Same as for the iPhone.

But I was someone who said that before/while the Z30 launched. Back then most probably saw me as a troll, but it makes me happy that this thought finally has more followers on CB.

Everybody who believes that the Z30/Z10 were high-end phones, obviously didn't understand what the competition had to offer.
BlackBerry, since the BB10 launch had exactly one high-end phone nearly worth the price tag and that was the Passport.
Everything else was overpriced and underspeced.

[Bbnivende]

What I wonder is if Samsung begins to peak as does ios, could a new player begin to steal market share? In 2007 the iPhone began to steal huge market share from BlackBerry. Could another "new" player supplant ios and Android? Just wondering.

Maybe we might see a universal app language that can be used by both iOS and Android. One that works better than what we have now.

I am curious about the QNX hypervisor and what BlackBerry can do with it.

It might be possible for a third way to develop in China or India and then move over to the west.

Posted via CB10

[Bbnivende]

BlackBerry had one niche that they to some extent squandered. They had three phones back in 2011. The 9900 firm factor, the Torch Slider and the all touch with a tool bar. They had a design language that was unique to BlackBerry. This language even carried over to their all touch.

I think they should be inspired by their former design language with phones that are not unusually large using the Android OS. They might sell 10 million of these.

They will not because Chen is not a phone guy, he is really just a software guy. It remind me of the time when accountants and hedge fund managers ran car companies.

The Classic is rather a weak recreation of the original. If it was a car it would be the Dodge Challenger. Why make their all touch models with sharp corners. Maybe BlackBerry should just hand over their design capacity to Porsche. At least the end result has some identity.

I think that is all BlackBerry has is what ever it is that their phones had in 2011, the feel, look and reliable keyboard or toolbar.

I really like BB10 but without an actual forked Android store that works, they can not sell enough phones to be profitable except maybe as a loss leader for their software business.

Posted via CB10

[Troy Tiscareno]

Maybe we might see a universal app language that can be used by both iOS and Android. One that works better than what we have now.

We don't have that on the desktop and it's been almost 30 years (even web apps/HTML5 need significant changes to properly support Windows and MacOS), and IMO it's maybe less likely to happen on mobile, because the OS's interface rules and design elements are so different. No developer wants to make a generic-looking, generic-operating app, because the competition will crush it with something better. Instead, they want to take advantage of the design language of the platform, and all of its unique rules and features, so that it looks and feels native, and gives the best user experience. You simply won't get that if you do a "one size fits all" solution - in fact, you'll usually end up with things that are broken and need fixing on each platform anyway.

In any event, BB10 won't be around long enough for this to matter anyway. Developer support for BB10, even among staunch BB supporters here on CB, is eroding very quickly, because no one is making money on BB10.

[jay64]

BlackBerry trades at 146 times earnings. Period.

[Bonsaibo]

BlackBerry trades at 146 times earnings. Period.

I didn't know it's PE was 146. Yowza.

[lnichols]

I'll give you the Z10 (because of its problems) but how was the Z30 not a high end phone at the time of its launch?

Screen. Samsung and HTC had upped the ante to 1080 screens and higher PPI. The Z10 has a higher PPI than the Z30. Had BlackBerry put a 1080 screen in the z30, it would have been close to high end. The SOC was a slightly more dated one too, but it does have a good quad core GPU.

Posted via Z30

[crackberry_geek]

BlackBerry trades at 146 times earnings. Period.

... which isn't very difficult when one has almost no earnings.

Posted via CB10

[MarsupilamiX]

We don't have that on the desktop and it's been almost 30 years (even web apps/HTML5 need significant changes to properly support Windows and MacOS), and IMO it's maybe less likely to happen on mobile, because the OS's interface rules and design elements are so different. No developer wants to make a generic-looking, generic-operating app, because the competition will crush it with something better. Instead, they want to take advantage of the design language of the platform, and all of its unique rules and features, so that it looks and feels native, and gives the best user experience. You simply won't get that if you do a "one size fits all" solution - in fact, you'll usually end up with things that are broken and need fixing on each platform anyway.

In any event, BB10 won't be around long enough for this to matter anyway. Developer support for BB10, even among staunch BB supporters here on CB, is eroding very quickly, because no one is making money on BB10.

Agree on the universal app language, it probably won't happen.

My MacBook however, is able to run all of the programs I have encountered until today.
Maybe I need Boot Camp, maybe I need something like parallels, but I can use all of the programs I have paid for, no matter if they were intended for Windows/Linux/MacOs.

Heck, I can even use Android and iOS apps on my MacBook.
I am pretty clueless when it comes down to coding, but as far as I know, the crux is that I can use different VMs to have virtual operating system that run within another OS.

But it's perfectly legal as far as I know. There are no MS services preventing me from using Microsoft programs (as in .exe files) on a Mac.

[app_Developer]

But it's perfectly legal as far as I know. There are no MS services preventing me from using Microsoft programs (as in .exe files) on a Mac.

It's legal assuming you have licensed a copy of MS Windows for your machine. Microsoft allows you to license windows and host it in a VM.

Google licenses Android differently.


Sent from my iPhone 6 using Tapatalk

[anon(8865116)]

BlackBerry trades at 146 times earnings. Period.

Blackberry isn't "profitable" right now so calculating PE is kind of dumb. Considering they were losing 50 cents a share a year ago, the EPS growth over 2 years has been insane. If you try to use that growth going forward, you could argue blackberry would be worth a lot more than it is today... fact is, no one wants to believe that because everyone is still predicting the end of blackberry. Honestly speaking, everyone still thinks cutting themselves to profitability will not pan out in the long run.

[jay64]

Calculating and observing PE as an investment guide is never "dumb". It is a standard investing tool and used extensively market wise as one way to calculate current value. Not the only metric for sure but calling it dumb is, well, dumb. As to the EPS growth projections this per Nasdaq :
Forecast Earnings Growth 2018 = (- 1,000.00 percent) link
BlackBerry Limited (BBRY) Forecast Earnings Growth - NASDAQ.com.
All projections are just that, blurry peeks into the future at best. PE ratio is real time and real value.
BTW, if you make 1.00 this year in software sales and "project" 2.00 next year, that is 100% growth projection. So when BB says 113 % growth last 1/4 in enterprise software (at least i think that's what the report said) remember the base # is the only context and that was terrible.

[jay64]

BTW: Forbes makes an excellent point today that BB may be oversold at today's price but it is a rare reality day on Wall Street and even Yellen's flunkies at the fed can't pump it today.