[xStevenLe]

Many people criticize BlackBerry because their products "suck". Many hateful comments because of past experiences with BlackBerry OS, and others just following the BlackBerry hate wave that's been going around. Comments such as BlackBerry is dead, and that CrackBerry users are stupid for choosing BlackBerry.

But when sales come on such as when Koodo dropped the price of the Q5 to $150, and now Telus having the prepaid Z10 for $199. They seem to sell like hotcakes. Being sold out and such! I mean not iPhone successful, but by all means far from dead! That leads me to believe it isn't really the product. BlackBerry 10 is great. And perhaps marketing, and a good pricing strategy would do wonders for BlackBerry!

What do you guys think?

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[Monsterlad]

Cheap things sell! Hopefully this will be the case with the z3

[Master of Surgery]

Cheap things sell! Hopefully this will be the case with the z3

Agreed.

Posted Securely Via Q10.

[mvpcrossxover]

They bought so they could say something along these lines "oh, I bought a Z10 for like $200. It's not worth it! It's slow! No apps! Return it after a week! BB10 is boring!"

I'm not saying all will do this. Most people will probably do this. Back then people would hate but rarely few of them got the chance to use the products. Now they can say I got to "experience" (even though I don't consider it an experience in less than a week or a few days) BB10. They use it as proofs to say they actually used it.

[Troy Tiscareno]

The Z10 sells because everyone knows it used to cost $650, so it seems like a bargain at $200 (and barely over a year old). But at $200, BB is losing at least $100 on every phone sold, because the manufacturing costs alone are about $250. Then there is shipping, marketing costs, channel costs, etc., not to mention the development costs that have to be amortized into the costs of the phones. Selling phones at a big loss is not exactly a winning strategy for BB - they don't have enough income from other sources to play that game.

[xStevenLe]

Yeah selling at a loss is not a good idea especially with the situation that they're in now. But I mean it could increase the number of people on the platform. I mean yeah they're going to be people who will still hate blackberry, but hey there will be some that will like it! Gaining a loyal bade one person at a time perhaps.

Posted via CB10

[Bbnivende]

The Z10 sells because everyone knows it used to cost $650, so it seems like a bargain at $200 (and barely over a year old). But at $200, BB is losing at least $100 on every phone sold, because the manufacturing costs alone are about $250. Then there is shipping, marketing costs, channel costs, etc., not to mention the development costs that have to be amortized into the costs of the phones. Selling phones at a big loss is not exactly a winning strategy for BB - they don't have enough income from other sources to play that game.

Perhaps it is just Telus getting rid of their inventory that they too already wrote down. A loss leader.

I think that $299 is a reasonable price for the Z10 unlocked given it's battery issues. You think it would Pay Blackberry to increase the size of the battery and provide a slightly wider battery cover and sell the device for $350.

[TGR1]

Perhaps it is just Telus getting rid of their inventory that they too already wrote down. A loss leader.

I think that $299 is a reasonable price for the Z10 unlocked given it's battery issues. You think it would Pay Blackberry to increase the size of the battery and provide a slightly wider battery cover and sell the device for $350.

I read a couple years back just how difficult it was to make money in the ~$200-300 segment of the market– far too competitive. It was what was killing HTC at the time so they decided to move up to the premium range.

I don't how that that actual price range has changed since but I do think the middle tier will still be a tough sell.

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

Perhaps it is just Telus getting rid of their inventory that they too already wrote down. A loss leader.

I think that $299 is a reasonable price for the Z10 unlocked given it's battery issues. You think it would Pay Blackberry to increase the size of the battery and provide a slightly wider battery cover and sell the device for $350.

Have to wonder if with the Z3, if they were to release it in all markets and then EOL the Z10 might not a new device release to replace the form factor but with a battery battery and a higher price point in between the Z3 and the Z30 work better. To continue to take a loss on the Z10, doesn't make a lot of sense at this point.

Now on launch day, selling Z10 for $199 or free on contract... that would have been a strategic move!


It would have still failed, but at least it would have appear they were really go after customers. For the low introductory price to have work, the OS needed another two or three months of baking to get a few more "bugs" out, and they would have needed every app in at least the top 25 from iOS and Android. And of course they would have needed to spend around $500 Million more than they did on marketing and letting people know that a "NEW" BlackBerry was in town.

Of course if I were changing BlackBerry history... I'd go way back to September of 2006 when rumors of Apple building a iPod/Phone first started circulating. Here is a company with a very successful music player device that can do much of what a BlackBerry could do.... all it need was a radio, all coming from a company with lots of experience in operating systems. I would have hit JIM and MIKE upside the head with a couple hundred iPods until they really looked at one. Imagine if BB10 had been started at the beginning of 2007 and had been release say four years ago... But of course most nobody expected the iPhone to be more than a novelty... at least not until a few weeks after it was released (still plenty of time to start working on a new OS).

[homl]

Of course if I were changing BlackBerry history... I'd go way back to September of 2006 when rumors of Apple building a iPod/Phone first started circulating. Here is a company with a very successful music player device that can do much of what a BlackBerry could do.... all it need was a radio, all coming from a company with lots of experience in operating systems. I would have hit JIM and MIKE upside the head with a couple hundred iPods until they really looked at one. Imagine if BB10 had been started at the beginning of 2007 and had been release say four years ago... But of course most nobody expected the iPhone to be more than a novelty... at least not until a few weeks after it was released (still plenty of time to start working on a new OS).

Hind sight is always 20/20 like they say. Many companies existence or non-existence is just one or two good or bad decisions away, including Microsoft and Apple.

[gebco]

BlackBerry has to get the phones into peoples' hands and get them onto the OS. Selling the Z10, which has already been written down, as a loss leader is not a bad strategy IMHO. Battery life may not be great but my Z10 compared similarly with others' iPhones. BlackBerry needs to get a way to get Android apps easily onto the phones as well until the day that developers see the BlackBerry ecosystem as popular enough. I for one enjoy having a few of the latest apps on my phone that wouldn't happen without Android apps. I know this doesn't please some of the BlackBerry purists but it is reality that people want apps, and now with Flash being outdated on our browser, many games can no longer be played online.

Posted via CB10

[Aljean Thein]

The Z10 sells because everyone knows it used to cost $650, so it seems like a bargain at $200 (and barely over a year old). But at $200, BB is losing at least $100 on every phone sold, because the manufacturing costs alone are about $250. Then there is shipping, marketing costs, channel costs, etc., not to mention the development costs that have to be amortized into the costs of the phones. Selling phones at a big loss is not exactly a winning strategy for BB - they don't have enough income from other sources to play that game.

I thought it only cost about $150 to manufacture the phone?

Posted via CB10

[xStevenLe]

BlackBerry has to get the phones into peoples' hands and get them onto the OS. Selling the Z10, which has already been written down, as a loss leader is not a bad strategy IMHO. Battery life may not be great but my Z10 compared similarly with others' iPhones. BlackBerry needs to get a way to get Android apps easily onto the phones as well until the day that developers see the BlackBerry ecosystem as popular enough. I for one enjoy having a few of the latest apps on my phone that wouldn't happen without Android apps. I know this doesn't please some of the BlackBerry purists but it is reality that people want apps, and now with Flash being outdated on our browser, many games can no longer be played online.

Posted via CB10

I agree with you completely!

[CHIP72]

Many people criticize BlackBerry because their products "suck". Many hateful comments because of past experiences with BlackBerry OS, and others just following the BlackBerry hate wave that's been going around. Comments such as BlackBerry is dead, and that CrackBerry users are stupid for choosing BlackBerry.

But when sales come on such as when Koodo dropped the price of the Q5 to $150, and now Telus having the prepaid Z10 for $199. They seem to sell like hotcakes. Being sold out and such! I mean not iPhone successful, but by all means far from dead! That leads me to believe it isn't really the product. BlackBerry 10 is great. And perhaps marketing, and a good pricing strategy would do wonders for BlackBerry!

What do you guys think?

Posted via CB10

A couple thoughts:
1) Selling BB10 smartphones for below cost (when you include marketing costs, supply chain costs, and other costs in addition to manufacturing costs) is not a sustainable business model.

2) The HP TouchPad was very popular in for about a 3 month period in late 2011 (from late August to roughly late November). I think many people who have used it would say it is a high quality device (albeit one with fairly poor build quality) with a very good mobile OS. However, do you think the TouchPad's popularity was due primarily to the product's excellence or the product's price? I'll note that in first six weeks the HP TouchPad was sale, its sales were minimal; that only changed after the infamous Leo Apotheker announcement.

[CHIP72]

Of course if I were changing BlackBerry history... I'd go way back to September of 2006 when rumors of Apple building a iPod/Phone first started circulating. Here is a company with a very successful music player device that can do much of what a BlackBerry could do.... all it need was a radio, all coming from a company with lots of experience in operating systems. I would have hit JIM and MIKE upside the head with a couple hundred iPods until they really looked at one. Imagine if BB10 had been started at the beginning of 2007 and had been release say four years ago... But of course most nobody expected the iPhone to be more than a novelty... at least not until a few weeks after it was released (still plenty of time to start working on a new OS).

If you read some of the articles out there, even if RIM's leadership had done what you suggested, they wouldn't have changed their approach in 2007. Mike Lazaridis looked at the original iPhone shortly after it was released and thought that although it was a very impressive piece of technology, he also thought that carriers wouldn't want to support the iPhone because it would greatly increase the strain on their mobile networks (the last point of which was actually proven correct). When AT&T was willing to sell the iPhone at a subsidized cost however, it made that device a lot more attractive (and a lot more financially attainable) for many customers, and those customers didn't care about bandwidth.

[ajst222]

I think it's the product AND the company. First off, the product doesn't meet people's needs. Second of all, the company doesn't know how to market the product and prices it far too high. All of this combines into one big failure.

Photo a Day: C002B5A07, my amateur photography Channel

[Troy Tiscareno]

I thought it only cost about $150 to manufacture the phone?

BB purchased the components too early (at higher prices), then didn't get the phones produced for a while, and BB's manufacturing was more expensive than others, resulting in a higher price per phone. There's a reason why, say, Apple, manufactures the iPhone in China. BB had manufacturing in Mexico and in Europe, and a tiny bit in Canada, but with globalization, you have to manufacture where your costs are lowest if you want to compete.

[birdman_38]

How can they sell the phone at a loss? And why just Telus prepaid in Canada?