[Upreti Saroj]

I think blackberry is losing the ecosystem war not the OS war. I have used os in all the platform and I think blackberry 10 is hands down the best one. But it has definitely lost the ecosystem war. Failure to execute on the promises by the blackberry executive is the only reason why blackberry will lose the os war.

Posted via CB10

[tyrellbristol]

The war is already lost

[Bold_until_Hybrid_Comes]

I think blackberry is losing the ecosystem war not the OS war. I have used os in all the platform and I think blackberry 10 is hands down the best one. But it has definitely lost the ecosystem war. Failure to execute on the promises by the blackberry executive is the only reason why blackberry will lose the os war.

Posted via CB10

Ecosystem war and OS war are one in the same in 2013.

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

Bringing a knife to a gunfight comes to mind....

People don't care very much about the OS - it's what a device can do... and in a big percentage of cases that involves running some app.

That said, while I like BB10, it is far from being a mature OS. There are a lot of little things missing, but when brought together as a whole it leave you wondering what they have been doing for the last three years.

That my Z10 doesn't dim in low light is very frustrating.
That official, notifications are very limited for incoming text and email - yes 10.2 has it... but for most people that could be months away.
Headless Apps..... Headless Apps.... Headless Apps....
Live Wallpapers with interaction from other apps - like weather, stock ticket....


BB10 has POTENTIAL to be great, but it's like the German Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe jets. If the Germans had been able to produce those 12 Months earlier... we would be living in a different world. Winning a War is about having the right pieces in the right place and at the right time... It's really all about timing, something that BlackBerry has never been able to master.

[Tre Lawrence]

Ecosystem war and OS war are one in the same in 2013.

Well said.

It seems that the ecosystem almost literally makes the OS.

[gogurt48]

I get the impression from reading this forum that a lot of BlackBerry users see their devices as productivity-enhancing tools, and little more. They're happy that their devices are more efficient at handling email and messages than competing devices are. Therefore, they want the OS and the native apps to be the best there is. There's certainly nothing wrong with that, but it may explain why BlackBerry is struggling.

I think that most smartphone users don't care much about the OS (unless it's clunky or gets in their way). They care about the apps their device can run, because those apps determine what the device can do.

For me, my iPhone isn't just my email client, it's my . . . everything. It's my camera, my camcorder, my web browser, my calendar, my music player, my video player, my phone, my calorie counter, my exercise coach, my journal, my address book, the thing that reminds me to take my medicine on time, my Facebook client, my email client, my TV guide, my ebook library, my shopping list, my GPS navigator, my Twitter client, my package tracker, my weather station, my news source, my calculator, my Bible, my unit converter, my stargazing guide, my level and plumb bob, my flashlight, my banking tool (check depositing, fund transfers, etc.), my audio memo recorder, my guitar tuner, my PayPal client, my tool for ordering pizza, my medical reference library, my first aid guide, my heart rate monitor (yes, it can actually do that without any attachments or accessories), my podcast player, my white noise generator to help me sleep, my language translator, my eBay client, my atomic clock with which I set my watch, my alarm clock, my timer, my stopwatch, and, of course, my gaming device. Heck, it's even a musical instrument (I have an app that lets me play it like a flute by blowing into the microphone while I finger a set of virtual holes on the touch screen).

I only use native apps for about three of those functions. For everything else, I depend on third-party apps. It seems that every day developers are coming up with ingenious new uses for my phone that I hadn't even thought of. I understand that Android has a similarly diverse ecosystem.

Unless BlackBerry has or gets an ecosystem that can compete with that, I don't think it has much of a chance of attracting the typical smartphone user, I'm sorry to say.

[rodan01]

BB10 is good, but nothing special. One of the weakness for the consumer market is poor graphic design, the design looks dated and boring.

[xandermac]

LOST ecosystem war and admitted as such by reclassifying their customers as pro-Sumers, or as I describe them people who do not expect applications to come to their platform.


Sent from my 4s using TapaTalk

[CrackedBarry]

Losing the ecosystem war?!?

At this point, BB is kinda like Hitler in Berlin 1945... The Americans and British have crossed the Rhine, and Zhukov and Konev are encircling the city.

I'm sure Heinz is furiously studying the map, and trying to find the spot where Wenck's 12th Army, I mean BBM, can strike a blow at the enemy, and break the encirclement.

[luisoman2000]

I get the impression from reading this forum that a lot of BlackBerry users see their devices as productivity-enhancing tools, and little more. They're happy that their devices are more efficient at handling email and messages than competing devices are. Therefore, they want the OS and the native apps to be the best there is. There's certainly nothing wrong with that, but it may explain why BlackBerry is struggling.

I think that most smartphone users don't care much about the OS (unless it's clunky or gets in their way). They care about the apps their device can run, because those apps determine what the device can do.

For me, my iPhone isn't just my email client, it's my . . . everything. It's my camera, my camcorder, my web browser, my calendar, my music player, my video player, my phone, my calorie counter, my exercise coach, my journal, my address book, the thing that reminds me to take my medicine on time, my Facebook client, my email client, my TV guide, my ebook library, my shopping list, my GPS navigator, my Twitter client, my package tracker, my weather station, my news source, my calculator, my Bible, my unit converter, my stargazing guide, my level and plumb bob, my flashlight, my banking tool (check depositing, fund transfers, etc.), my audio memo recorder, my guitar tuner, my PayPal client, my tool for ordering pizza, my medical reference library, my first aid guide, my heart rate monitor (yes, it can actually do that without any attachments or accessories), my podcast player, my white noise generator to help me sleep, my language translator, my eBay client, my atomic clock with which I set my watch, my alarm clock, my timer, my stopwatch, and, of course, my gaming device. Heck, it's even a musical instrument (I have an app that lets me play it like a flute by blowing into the microphone while I finger a set of virtual holes on the touch screen).

I only use native apps for about three of those functions. For everything else, I depend on third-party apps. It seems that every day developers are coming up with ingenious new uses for my phone that I hadn't even thought of. I understand that Android has a similarly diverse ecosystem.

Unless BlackBerry has or gets an ecosystem that can compete with that, I don't think it has much of a chance of attracting the typical smartphone user, I'm sorry to say.

Agree 100%. My phone is my swiss army knife, it needs to everything i need it to do(short of making me breakfast) and a lot of that functionality comes from third party apps. The "tools not toys" argument is no longer valid. Smartphone users want both a tool and a toy. blackberry failed to see this early on and now they are struggling, and app makers are pretty much not interested in porting apps.

[cgk]

This just in from developer relations:

[Tre Lawrence]

Agree 100%. My phone is my swiss army knife, it needs to everything i need it to do(short of making me breakfast) and a lot of that functionality comes from third party apps. The "tools not toys" argument is no longer valid. Smartphone users want both a tool and a toy. blackberry failed to see this early on and now they are struggling, and app makers are pretty much not interested in porting apps.

Love the Swiss army knife reference. I feel the same.

[gogurt48]

Agree 100%. My phone is my swiss army knife

Excellent analogy!

The "tools not toys" argument is no longer valid.

If it ever was. Most of the functions I mentioned above require a tool. If I want to refill a prescription or deposit a check using the camera, that's a tool. Likewise if I want to navigate somewhere, or find out if my table is level. Other examples could be multiplied almost indefinitely.

[canuckvoip]

Losing the ecosystem war?!?

At this point, BB is kinda like Hitler in Berlin 1945... The Americans and British have crossed the Rhine, and Zhukov and Konev are encircling the city.

I'm sure Heinz is furiously studying the map, and trying to find the spot where Wenck's 12th Army, I mean BBM, can strike a blow at the enemy, and break the encirclement.

Surely you could come up with a less offensive comparison. That's truly sad.

[David Murray1]

Who gives a sh!t? Apple has thirty-three thousand trillion Apps but they still suck major ***.

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

Who gives a sh!t? Apple has thirty-three thousand trillion Apps but they still suck major ***.

I wish I owned a company that consistently sucked that bad...

At this point I'm thinking I wish I owned a devcie from a company that sucked that bad.

[Warlack]

For someone who has not been using tons of apps and always had his laptops by his side, the Z10 does not seem to lose so much as it allows me to leave my laptop at home any get on with my life from the pan of my hand. I started doing almost everything with this great toy and feel like I am not missing out. It might be because I use the browser for most of my doings and base an extensive list of bookmarks which I recreate every time I load a leaked OS and therefore refine it all the time.

The way I see my BlackBerry, It is not an Ecosystem, it is a bridge between those.

I have my own world within my laptops and hard drives and all cloud services are connected via the browser.

During the BlackBerry Jam, they have shown off the future of mobile computing.

Your phone as an intermediary between all other gadgets and everything around you.

Android and Apple have had a head start, however they are stuck within the paradigm that you need "an app for that"

What I admire is the interconnectivity which makes me jump from this post onto twitter and from there to BBM, further to Facebook, a YouTube video and back to this post again after saving the video on Evernote, back to the CB thread.

On my laptop it would have meant to open several browsers, an iOS it would have been several apps, just like on Android.

Here it has been the feeling of just one App and the browser to return to after a nice discourse.

My Z10 enhances creativity by allowing me to move around and let my thoughts wander without making me lose my original thought in a forest of open apps.
When I want to share, I get not hindered by the limitation of accessing a cloud or an app already - with its own train of thought. I can just sidestep it with multitasking and use it as a separate entity until conclusion.

It is a mighty tool for creation and sharing ones thoughts. More than a laptop or any other device I used.

I see such an unbelievable potential within the OS that I could not care less about having an Ecosystem which holds me hostage.

For being around just 7 months, this interdependence between all the different clouds and social networks, as well as the cloud is mind boggling.

I agree wholeheartedly with the fact that many links are still very weak and need to be enhanced. Banking, shopping and the myriad of cloud services need to get linked to it.

Yet I feel strongly when others complain by saying that it is just for communication and lacks all the little apps which you got accustomed to.

Coming from a laptop, I don't see it. I might be old school in this way... and still believe in the almighty Browser.

I dare say that almost every use case is possible with what BB10 is offering at the moment. Just with the special flow that allows you to follow your wandering mind, knowing that you will alway find your way back home.

Posted via CB10

[sk8er_tor]

The thing is that Thor and company had been talking about so much about M2M, no need for a tablet, and so much more. Where is all this? Was it just talk in order to buy themselves time?

When you think back to Android, they didn't have many apps either. In fact, they had about 3,000 apps after six months of launching. BlackBerry 10 is hands down beating that figure even if you don't count all of the S4BB apps, and yet it still did well. As mentioned earlier today, look how long it took Android to get Instagram. So I really think that marketing screwed this up, big time. They didn't focus on the benefits of BB10 in the TV ads. They didn't inform customers that this is a brand new OS. It was just a complete waste of marketing dollars and yet another failure for Frank to add to his resume.

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

The way I see my BlackBerry, It is not an Ecosystem, it is a bridge between those.

I have my own world within my laptops and hard drives and all cloud services are connected via the browser.

During the BlackBerry Jam, they have shown off the future of mobile computing.

Your phone as an intermediary between all other gadgets and everything around you.

Android and Apple have had a head start, however they are stuck within the paradigm that you need "an app for that"

BlackBerry is SHOWING you their version of the future. Apple, Google and Microsoft are building their version of the future.... guess who will get their first?


I would LOVE a world where we aren't tied to an ecosystem, where all devices had SD Card Slots and everyone used a Browser instead of custom apps. But there isn't any money in that world for the hardware or OS developers.... so they are not going to embrace it. BlackBerry is only embracing it because they don't have an ecosystem right now...

At this point anything BB tells you should be taken with a pint of salt.

[avt123]

The ecosystem war was lost a long time ago.

[SparkyBC]

It was over before bb10 was even launched. Just be thankful it had an android player to give users some apps. Without that the bigger apps would still not be there at all.

[Tre Lawrence]

The thing is that Thor and company had been talking about so much about M2M, no need for a tablet, and so much more. Where is all this? Was it just talk in order to buy themselves time?

When you think back to Android, they didn't have many apps either. In fact, they had about 3,000 apps after six months of launching. BlackBerry 10 is hands down beating that figure even if you don't count all of the S4BB apps, and yet it still did well. As mentioned earlier today, look how long it took Android to get Instagram. So I really think that marketing screwed this up, big time. They didn't focus on the benefits of BB10 in the TV ads. They didn't inform customers that this is a brand new OS. It was just a complete waste of marketing dollars and yet another failure for Frank to add to his resume.

Instagram is a red herring of sorts. It was an iOS exclusive, and eventually, Android became too big of a segment to ignore (like Flipboard, IIRC). Thus, I wouldn't use it as an example of Android lagging in the ecosystem battle (even though Android did lag). Android getting Instagram put the other platforms on the defensive.

But back to the apps... there was a time when, if you were to ignore the hardware pieces of the ecosystem, BBRY was actually ahead of Apple. Yes... there were more apps on legacy BBOS than the new iPhone. Android was still on the drawing board. And the rest is history.

IME, to summarize, Apple stumbled on a symbiotic means of using third-party developers to extend the functionality of its devices. BBRY didn't respond quickly enough. WebOS could have jumped ahead, but the inability to natively run legacy Palm apps slowed it down. Android was a bit late, but had one thing going: Gapps and OEMs willing to use the ecosystem, and sales took care of the rest.

So, again, as far as I am concerned, it isn't really about the marketing. It's more about the manifestation of the issue BBRY was slow to react to earlier on: Joe Schmo can do on Android, and can do on iOS but can't do on BB10. No marketing can fix that perception.

[Warlack]

The ecosystem war was lost a long time ago.

You are right.
Linux and Chrome OS have proven that it has been lost.

All you need is a browser and you can enter various clouds to do most of your work.

Heck...My former CEO has a nice marketing company running and upgraded a few months ago to JUST the cheapest Chrome OS Notebook as work devices.
He said that for the few dollars he does not care if you bring it back after you leave or not. Because they are not attached to anything except the cloud, there is little cost involved.

Every ecosystem which is not universally accessible is doomed to fail.

Posted via CB10

[bradu1]

For someone who has not been using tons of apps and always had his laptops by his side, the Z10 does not seem to lose so much as it allows me to leave my laptop at home any get on with my life from the pan of my hand. I started doing almost everything with this great toy and feel like I am not missing out. It might be because I use the browser for most of my doings and base an extensive list of bookmarks which I recreate every time I load a leaked OS and therefore refine it all the time.

The way I see my BlackBerry, It is not an Ecosystem, it is a bridge between those.

I have my own world within my laptops and hard drives and all cloud services are connected via the browser.

During the BlackBerry Jam, they have shown off the future of mobile computing.

Your phone as an intermediary between all other gadgets and everything around you.

Android and Apple have had a head start, however they are stuck within the paradigm that you need "an app for that"

What I admire is the interconnectivity which makes me jump from this post onto twitter and from there to BBM, further to Facebook, a YouTube video and back to this post again after saving the video on Evernote, back to the CB thread.

On my laptop it would have meant to open several browsers, an iOS it would have been several apps, just like on Android.

Here it has been the feeling of just one App and the browser to return to after a nice discourse.

My Z10 enhances creativity by allowing me to move around and let my thoughts wander without making me lose my original thought in a forest of open apps.
When I want to share, I get not hindered by the limitation of accessing a cloud or an app already - with its own train of thought. I can just sidestep it with multitasking and use it as a separate entity until conclusion.

It is a mighty tool for creation and sharing ones thoughts. More than a laptop or any other device I used.

I see such an unbelievable potential within the OS that I could not care less about having an Ecosystem which holds me hostage.

For being around just 7 months, this interdependence between all the different clouds and social networks, as well as the cloud is mind boggling.

I agree wholeheartedly with the fact that many links are still very weak and need to be enhanced. Banking, shopping and the myriad of cloud services need to get linked to it.

Yet I feel strongly when others complain by saying that it is just for communication and lacks all the little apps which you got accustomed to.

Coming from a laptop, I don't see it. I might be old school in this way... and still believe in the almighty Browser.

I dare say that almost every use case is possible with what BB10 is offering at the moment. Just with the special flow that allows you to follow your wandering mind, knowing that you will alway find your way back home.

Posted via CB10

^^ This!! So much this!!

The Z is by far the best device I've ever used. Ever. My needs, the things I use my devices for, nothing else even comes close.



Posted via CB10

[farside33]

This demotivator sums it up when comparing ecosystems.

http://www.despair.com/perspective.html