[Troy Tiscareno]

https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/26/1...d-phone-switch

Even Bill Gates has moved to Android. For those still questioning BB's move, if there was any company on the planet who should have been able to compete, it would be Microsoft, with their enormous resources - but they couldn't. And now they are focusing on bringing MS apps to Android and iOS instead of their own, effectively abandoned platform (WinPhone/Win10Phone).

MS spent upwards of $20 billion trying to make WinPhone work since 2007, and got no real traction. Considering that they were in existence before the iPhone (WinMobile), and were the largest software and OS manufacturer in the world, to have lost this battle shows that when you are out-of-touch and focused on the wrong things, it doesn't matter what kind of resources you have: you will lose, because the customers aren't as dumb as some would like to believe.

[Laura Knotek]

I saw the writing on the wall over 2 years ago and switched to Android when apps either never arrived or were discontinued for Windows Mobile.

[Denise in Los Angeles]

I heard that on the news this morning. LOL.

[Troy Tiscareno]

I saw the writing on the wall over 2 years ago and switched to Android when apps either never arrived or were discontinued for Windows Mobile.

Most people did, but there are still some folks here who can't stand to be apart of anything mainstream, and some of them still believe that WinPhone is a viable alternative once they have to leave BB10. LOL. Others think they're going to make Sailfish their daily driver.

MS's Nadella was under no illusion - he voted against MS acquiring Nokia, believing that it would be impossible to catch up. Ballmer lost about $10B trying to prove him wrong, but WinPhone's marketshare has fallen into "Other" territory.

It speaks against the argument that BB didn't advertise enough, or that "if people knew about it, they'd have bought it." Everyone knew about WinPhone, and MS spent billions to advertise it, and subsidized phone prices to get units in people's hands, and at the end of the day, most of their customers are using Android, with a few at the top using iOS.

A mobile OS with no app and service ecosystem cannot survive, and mobile platforms are far too expensive to survive serving the handful of outliers who don't care about apps.

[Invictus0]

Microsoft essentially gave up on phones when Ballmer left so this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, this quote by Nadella drives it home (and I actually don't disagree with his reasoning either).

I did not get why the world needed the third ecosystem in phones, unless we changed the rules … But it was too late to regain the ground we had lost. We were chasing our competitors' taillights.

https://www.windowscentral.com/satya...ia-acquisition

[kvndoom]

Microsoft essentially gave up on phones when Ballmer left so this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, this quote by Nadella drives it home (and I actually don't disagree with his reasoning either).



https://www.windowscentral.com/satya...ia-acquisition

I considered posting that yesterday but I refrained. BB10's failure will always be John Chen's fault, regardless of how much evidence exists to show otherwise. Why bother, I asked myself.

[Invictus0]

I considered posting that yesterday but I refrained. BB10's failure will always be John Chen's fault, regardless of how much evidence exists to show otherwise. Why bother, I asked myself.

Three CEO's (I'm including Heins because he made the decision to leave the consumer market for enterprise) making similar statements independently of one another, what are they trying to say here?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[johnny_bravo72]

I wonder what's the mood like now at windowscentral.

[Troy Tiscareno]

I wonder what's the mood like now at windowscentral.

You'd find it very familiar. Lots of people leaving, some people declaring their intention to go down with the ship, and a few people putting all their hopes on a Surface Phone that will never arrive...

[butterbean1983]

Why can people not understand that the mainstream conformist mentality controls the market and not the other way around? The market doesn't control crap. The better product does not always win, nor should the most favored product be the ONLY product. And those who support and promote android and iOS being the only smartphones are part of this conformist mentality. Nikola Tesla famously said anti-social behavior is a trait of intelligence in a world full of conformist. The father of modern electronics said this, and now those who choose and are perfectly within their rights to not be mainstream are ridiculed.

[butterbean1983]

What I meant was the winning product is not always the better product. It's just the product that got chosen by the mainstream.

[johnny_bravo72]

Why can people not understand that the mainstream conformist mentality controls the market and not the other way around? The market doesn't control crap. The better product does not always win, nor should the most favored product be the ONLY product. And those who support and promote android and iOS being the only smartphones are part of this conformist mentality. Nikola Tesla famously said anti-social behavior is a trait of intelligence in a world full of conformist. The father of modern electronics said this, and now those who choose and are perfectly within their rights to not be mainstream are ridiculed.

So you're saying Bill Gates is now part of the "conformist mentality" crowd?

[butterbean1983]

I'm not even addressing that remark lol. The point









Your head.

[johnny_bravo72]

I'm not even addressing that remark lol. The point









Your head.

Your response perfectly matches your "logical" analysis/opinion.

[butterbean1983]

Haha cool story bro don't tell it again

[TheBirdDog]

You'd find it very familiar. Lots of people leaving, some people declaring their intention to go down with the ship, and a few people putting all their hopes on a Surface Phone that will never arrive...

But will they still release Windows 10.4???!

[i_plod_an_dr_void]

https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/26/1...d-phone-switch

Even Bill Gates has moved to Android. For those still questioning BB's move, if there was any company on the planet who should have been able to compete, it would be Microsoft, with their enormous resources - but they couldn't. And now they are focusing on bringing MS apps to Android and iOS instead of their own, effectively abandoned platform (WinPhone/Win10Phone).

MS spent upwards of $20 billion trying to make WinPhone work since 2007, and got no real traction. Considering that they were in existence before the iPhone (WinMobile), and were the largest software and OS manufacturer in the world, to have lost this battle shows that when you are out-of-touch and focused on the wrong things, it doesn't matter what kind of resources you have: you will lose, because the customers aren't as dumb as some would like to believe.

Microsoft has it's hand's in many cookie jars, but almost all of them are soft-cookies (software), not hard-cookies (hardware)excepting the Surface (recently), and some minor forays with the mouse and keyboards....whereas BlackBerry had the better chance as it was always into the hardware and focused on the phone (even though it was significantly smaller), and not having to worry about getting visual basic or visual studio right and not having to fight off Linux repeatedly. Just because Microsoft failed, didn't mean BlackBerry had to. Doesn't mean Microsoft won't try again somewhere down the road though....it just hasn't figured out how to do it yet.

[i_plod_an_dr_void]

Maybe Microsoft would have been smarter to pick up Blackberry when its BB10 got off to a rocky start, as an investor, than to try on its own (after all android had many iterations of crap before it got good enough).....it had he money, and BlackBerry the know-how.

[danfrancisco]

I for one am very thankful that BB got out of the hardware business and gotten into licensing partnerships. I'm not saying that the TCL partnership will end up saving the BB brand, but it has at least breathed some life into the name and has delivered us three new phones (even if the DTEKs were based on pre-existing designs).

I loved BB10 to bits... loved it! But am so happy to be on the DroidBerry train now. There is at least hope now for the brand.

I'm saddened by the death of WP. I've always been curious about that OS so maybe now's an ideal time to pick up a Lumia for a bargain basement price.

[Troy Tiscareno]

What I meant was the winning product is not always the better product. It's just the product that got chosen by the mainstream.

Why did the mainstream choose it, though?

BECAUSE IT WAS THE BETTER PRODUCT FOR THEIR NEEDS.

On one hand, you celebrate being an outlier - a "non-conformist" - yet you are (at least) disappointed (if not outright UPSET) that the industry as a whole didn't cater to your outlier priorities, and instead catered to mainstream priorities. That shouldn't be a surprise at all.

Things with a relatively small number of dependencies - say, restaurant food - can cater to non-mainstream tastes, at least in highly populated areas. The investment isn't super high, and if it falls, the business could be retooled and make other food with a minimal investment.

But something like a computer or smartphone platform has SO MANY outside dependencies that small niches simply can't be profitable. Such as business must cater to mainstream priorities or be willing to lose billions of dollars.

BB and Microsoft both gave it a shot, and both had a few diehard fans (outliers), but both lost billions before pulling the plug. The only ones surprised by this are people in those outlier groups.

[joeldf]

I considered posting that yesterday but I refrained. BB10's failure will always be John Chen's fault, regardless of how much evidence exists to show otherwise. Why bother, I asked myself.

You mean, evidence such as Mike Lazaridis, Jim Balsillie and Thorsten Heins?

BB10 was a failure before Chen came along.

Mike and Jim may have bought QNX, but they gave it a half-baked effort - crippling the Astonishing Tribe on the UI front, and forcing BB10 to be developed in a vacuum by ignoring the best features of the BBOS. Then having to play catch-up for the next 3 years after release shoe-horning some of those features back in (remember when "Bedside Mode" didn't even exist when BB10 was first released?).

Thorsten Heins comes in over-promising for the BB10 debut, then under-delivering. When AT&T finally announces the Z10 several months after the rest of the world has already had it, Heins says a media blitz will accompany the release. Never happened. In fact, the promised trainers from BB never made it to most AT&T stores. Then, Heins puts out the "for sale" sign... and no one bites.

You can blame Chen all day long, but it doesn't mean it's actually his fault.

[i_plod_an_dr_void]

...oops leftout x-box in MS's hardware businesses...(didn't hurt to have a long lineage of PC-games pre-dating it)...and of course the phones were other labels...hp, alcatel etc.., but even they MS had the hard-nut of the Google/Android manufacturers what I'll call "Cartel" to have to overcome.

[co4nd]

I really thought Windows Phone would continue, but I won't be mourning it's demise.

[kvndoom]

You mean, evidence such as Mike Lazaridis, Jim Balsillie and Thorsten Heins?

BB10 was a failure before Chen came along.

Mike and Jim may have bought QNX, but they gave it a half-baked effort - crippling the Astonishing Tribe on the UI front, and forcing BB10 to be developed in a vacuum by ignoring the best features of the BBOS. Then having to play catch-up for the next 3 years after release shoe-horning some of those features back in (remember when "Bedside Mode" didn't even exist when BB10 was first released?).

Thorsten Heins comes in over-promising for the BB10 debut, then under-delivering. When AT&T finally announces the Z10 several months after the rest of the world has already had it, Heins says a media blitz will accompany the release. Never happened. In fact, the promised trainers from BB never made it to most AT&T stores. Then, Heins puts out the "for sale" sign... and no one bites.

You can blame Chen all day long, but it doesn't mean it's actually his fault.

I totally worded that wrong. My second sentence should have began "according to Crackberry posters..." D'oh!

[thurask]

You mean, evidence such as Mike Lazaridis, Jim Balsillie and Thorsten Heins?

*whoosh*

[Microsoft] had he money, and BlackBerry the know-how.

You're sure?