[Jose Casiano]

Hey guys, I've been on the Crackberry forums forever, mainly by an old user-name but I digress. I wanted to note somethings that I find on the forums all the time and what not and just wanted to put my own "quick" thoughts on it.

I see Blackberry making a huge statement about them not necessarily focusing on the consumer market. I understand this and has been spoken about a lot. The only thing is people still don't get it. I wondered this but I'm starting to look at it in a different way. As in why do I use Blackberry if it's really focused to the business consumer? I'm not in sales anymore, Blackberry doesn't require their services in consumer products like back in the day, as well as push email has gotten relatively good on other devices. I love BB 10, but it's the fact that their OS can translate to the consumer very well. I think that from a consumer perspective we want to see them succeed because they have the potential to succeed in the consumer market because we as the market want them there. (I really have more to talk about each one but I'm going to let it come out in several posts on here as I'm supposed to be doing home work. Anyway..

We know they can succeed we speak about it on the daily on these forums, but what can BlackBerry really do? On the consumer side?
Another question is well, we know what has been leaked are we really expecting anything more from BlackBerry? Passport and Classic, cool... (I'm actually excited) and 10.3, nothing really else?Can they finally do something awesome with QNX infotainment? Blend is awesome but what else are they going to be releasing? I'm not trying to compare to everyone else's release I'm not that excited as I was as the original bb 10 launch....

Maybe split the BB10 offering to create a consumer version a customizable version that is licensed? or Maybe not but still something so that more than one manufacturer can expand BlackBerry? ( I know it's been spoken before right?)

I guess I'm just not that excited due to their focus mainly being on enterprise. I wish some of those security features were available to the average consumer, something like that for the average consumer can be extremely valuable. A suite of applications for the secured conscientious consumer right, an enhanced password keeper that can be synchronized with your at home browser, a photo locking app from blackberry? NFC pay system? Other things like that can make it nice. But i do see their predicament, the risk may outweigh the benefit right?

People might be like what about a blackberry watch.... NO... But if they did I'd say that A smartwatch can't be too many things and too little things. So I'd say this... Touchscreen with some buttons to help navigation, I don't care about text messaging on email on my watch.... (ugh no..) Health apps yes.( but doesn't require phone). Music (yes) but can be independent from phone, as in can get music from memory card. Bluetooth as in don't need my phone to connect it to stereo bluetooth (see where I'm getting at here?. GPS, (Map application to track movement and small nav). Something like that, you carry your phone everywhere unless your watch is going to be your phone, then no need to have all these extra features that you are going to hate to use, use it as a watch to go out to the gym and record your stuff, and listen to music without damaging your phone.....

I know these are random questions to random thoughts that have been mentioned before but I don't know just wanted to get them out.

[Troy Tiscareno]

BB simply doesn't have the resources to do most of the things you are talking about. Keep in mind that they've had to cut their staff from 17,000 a couple of years ago down to under 7,000 today. Financial constraints means they have to focus their spending on their areas of sales focus, and can't really afford to have projects outside that focus right now. They are still in what could be considered a financial crisis, and while they have stopped the worst of the bleeding, the "patient" is no where near out of danger, much less "healed."

The other thing is: for many of the things you talked about, BB would have to get a lot of other people and companies on-board in order to make it happen, and BB doesn't exactly have ton of clout on the consumer market, given that their marketshare of it is under half a percent.

BB didn't abandon the consumer market because it didn't want to serve the consumer market, it abandoned it because the consumer market simply didn't buy into BB10, as, compared to the competition, they didn't see the value (and most of this was related to the lack of ecosystem, which was a direct consequence of BB taking so long to get BB10 to market). BB simply doesn't have the money or the human resources to develop all of those consumer-related apps and services right now, even though those are things that prevent more sales. If they could, they would have already.