[njblackberry]

believing that "I am right and the market is wrong" is the height of hubris - and hubris can be fatal. just ask Lazaridis and Balsillie

Come on - share the wealth - there are lots of people here who feel the same way!

[TouchScreen123]

The mass of dumb consumers love their Apple-phones and their 'apps' (lol) - let them eat cake. I like my BlackBerry because I know what I'm doing!

Well Mr Techno guy thats all fine and dandy, so I'll eat cake and have my Samsung apps. When Blackberry goes out of business your plate will be empty, lets see how much you ''LOL'' then. BB cant sustain itself for much longer. People are tired of Heinz, his lies and his requests for second chances.

[TouchScreen123]

???????? What does this even mean?

It means he thinks hes ''all that''...lets see how prevellant his attitude is when BB goes out of business. I'll be LOLing at guys like him with my Samsung and my 750,000 apps.

[TouchScreen123]

believing that "I am right and the market is wrong" is the height of hubris - and hubris can be fatal. just ask Lazaridis and Balsillie

Add Heinz, his lies and deception to your list of failed BB CEO's. And its not the height of hubris to second guess the people in power. If you believe that then you are nothing but a drone.

[TouchScreen123]

It means people with an obsession about 750 million apps on a mobile telephone are dumb, dumb, dumb and to say that BlackBerry phones aren't working because they don't have thirty billion apps like Apple phones do is just downright ********.

What is an app? A lot of the exact same functionality is available in a browser and on websites designed for mobile devices.

How can you say thats ''********''? Its a proven fact apps make a tablet/phone. Its ''********'' to think otherwise.

[berklon]

It means people with an obsession about 750 million apps on a mobile telephone are dumb, dumb, dumb and to say that BlackBerry phones aren't working because they don't have thirty billion apps like Apple phones do is just downright ********.

What is an app? A lot of the exact same functionality is available in a browser and on websites designed for mobile devices.

It sounds like you haven't gotten to try out a lot of apps, or you'd know that there are thousands and thousands of apps that couldn't be replicated just by visiting the websites.

And the apps that do replace visiting websites - they offer much more efficiency in getting the information you need without having to go to a webpage, browse around and then having to continuously zoom in and out of articles in order to read and navigate. .

[msps]

I don't see how that is different from bb10 and it's android runtime. Sailfish must also have an android runtime built in. Maybe it'll be a better runtime, but we'll see, I doubt it. But they still won't have access to the Google store, so users will still have to sideload apps.

Posted via CB10

Kindle users don't have access to Google store. Would you call installing apps from amazon side loading?

I know kindle is an android fork and Jolla isn't but the principle is the same. If they'll manage to get android apps to be installed directly from the phone and they would work as good as on android phone but android malware is sandboxed by Sailfish OS, they may be the next big thing.

I pre ordered.
We'll see.

[TouchScreen123]

It sounds like you haven't gotten to try out a lot of apps, or you'd know that there are thousands and thousands of apps that couldn't be replicated just by visiting the websites.

And the apps that do replace visiting websites - they offer much more efficiency in getting the information you need without having to go to a webpage, browse around and then having to continuously zoom in and out of articles in order to read and navigate. .

It sounds more to me like he is too arrogant and stuck in the BB fanboy mentality to care. Guys like him think they are ''all that'' with their tech skills and are too narrow minded to see that 750,000 Android apps on an Android device is win/win. The insane things about guys like him trying to sideload Android apps on BB10 is, if they had an Android phone to start with, they wouldnt need to do the idiotic sideloading which they are defending. At any rate he's the one who is suffering by limiting himself to BB10 and their meager apps.

[TouchScreen123]

Kindle users don't have access to Google store. Would you call installing apps from amazon side loading?

I know kindle is an android fork and Jolla isn't but the principle is the same. If they'll manage to get android apps to be installed directly from the phone and they would work as good as on android phone but android malware is sandboxed by Sailfish OS, they may be the next big thing.

I pre ordered.
We'll see.

Kindle is not Google certified which is why I got a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2. Android is not the only pre-requsit for a tablet. It must be Google certified...or no deal.

[Eumaeus]

It means people with an obsession about 750 million apps on a mobile telephone are dumb, dumb, dumb and to say that BlackBerry phones aren't working because they don't have thirty billion apps like Apple phones do is just downright ********.

What is an app? A lot of the exact same functionality is available in a browser and on websites designed for mobile devices.

This is a post about the two most common battle-cries of folks who want Blackberry to succeed (as I want BB to succeed): "Apps aren't all that!" and "Apple was near death once, too!"

Blackberry is betting the farm on "mobile computing". "Computing" means software, compelling software. That means "apps". This is a very, very pressing problem for BB right now.

It is common for BB fans to point to Apple's near-death experience and spectacular return to profitability. I was a Mac developer during the dark days (I remember browsing catalogues, looking for which Windows NT computer I would buy when Apple finally failed). I remember what, precisely, Jobs did to save Apple back in 1997 (note that this was ten years before the iPhone, and four years before even the iPod).

The key was software. Apple was about to lose three critical applications (which was what we called "apps" back in the day): Microsoft Office, MS Internet Explorer, and Intuit's Quicken. If MS and Intuit stopped developing for the Mac, it was essentially dead as a consumer platform, even if Quark and Adobe kept their publishing apps alive for a few more years.

Everyone makes a big deal about Microsoft's investment in Apple stock, but that was superficial showmanship (MS bought $150 million in non-voting stock, which they sold a few years later at a nice profit; to put it in context, AAPL's mean market cap in 1997 was $2.24 billion, so MS's investment was 7% of Apple's market cap.)

What Jobs did that saved the company was to go, personally, to Microsoft and Intuit, to show off the iMac (still under development). The iMac was not Jobs' creation... it was already under development when he returned to the company. But he did the job of selling the iMac as a forward-looking device that would attract consumer interest. MS and Intuit bought his sales-pitch and pledged to continue developing their applications for the Macintosh.

In terms of specs, the iMac was nothing spectacular, but Apple sold it, not just to consumers, but first to the other corporations who provided vital elements of the infrastructure on which it depended.

The iMac made money; Intuit's continued development of Quicken made money; Microsoft made money, both selling Office on the Mac and selling its Apple stock.

With the original iPhone, Steve Jobs sold the idea to ATT, forcing them to re-write their voice-mail system for the new phone's "visual voice mail", and badgering them into providing flat-rate, unlimited data, so people could really use the e-mail app and mobile Safari that the original phone included.

This is the lesson Blackberry needs to look at right now. BB's ad agency should be selling BB10 devices to consumers (which they are not doing well, as far as I can tell). But the CEO needs to be selling BB10 devices and their forward-looking potential to the companies who will make the compelling applications for it. And instead of throwing the carriers under the bus at the shareholders' meeting, the CEO should be selling them on BB10 as a mutually profitable, long-term product: "BB10 is a mobile computing platform; as such it will encourage users to use more mobile data; you guys will sell them that mobile data; we'll all get rich!"

Finally, there is point-of-sale. This is BB's other big problem. By relying on carrier stores and big-box retailers, BB is doomed to be one idiosyncratic player in a world of (1) Samsung/Android devices, (2) all the other Android devices, (3) iPhones, and (4) WP8 devices.

It kills me that Blackberry is giving up on their "Blackberry Stores". This is the other thing Apple did to come back from the dead. They opened the first Apple Stores in 2001, and everyone thought they were nuts. They were not nuts. Apple Stores are the most profitable retail space, per square foot, in the world. If their profitability drops by 1/2, they will still be tied for first (with Tiffany's). You go into an Apple Store to buy a phone, and they have iPhones. They don't have Samsungs or Nokias or HTCs or anything else. Your iPhone breaks, you go there, and a human being will help you. This is huge.

I loved the BB store in the Charlotte airport. You went in there, and it was BB stuff. Period. No competition, no mysterious "some Asian company is paying the salespeople extra bonuses to push their phones this week", no staff misinformed about BB stuff.

With dedicated retail space, you don't have to compete on every, single spec with every single other phone. Selling mobile devices is hard, because (on paper) they are all pretty much the same. So the challenge is (a) to make sure your offering has no obvious deficiency, and (b) to avoid competing with every other phone.

BB needs to do whatever it takes, including spending all that cash, to badger, bribe, or buy a complete suite of must-have apps for BB10 and new ones that no one has imagined yet. And they need to break out of being "another phone on the wall" in retail spaces where the people talking to customers don't care at all about BB10 devices.

Sorry to go on so long, but Blackberry's travails are really frustrating to me. I like the idea of hardware/software integration, which is what BB has always offered, and is what Apple offers. BB and Apple are not really in competition right now (this may change in the future, if all goes well for BB). BB is competing with the Android hordes and WP8. They will not win unless they can capitalize on their advantages.

I see Heins and the leadership trying a "business as usual" approach. They are hoping that developers will make apps. They are hoping the carriers will sell their phones. Being passive will kill them, quickly or slowly.

[Roo Zilla]

The quality of the builds and keyboard in my opinion trumps ios and android. It's ridiculous how in accurate the virtual touch typing and I still think that needs major improvement. Smartphones are used a lot for social usage and social usage is communication via typing. If the typing experience is flawed yet you have a beautiful slim all touch screen smartphone, then it ain't so smart if typing inaccuracy is going to be a user experience everyday!

Posted via CB10

Typing is sooooooooooo last decade...... People just dictate to their phones now. Pretty soon, improving the typing on a phone is going to be like making a better cassette cassette player. Sure some people still like cassettes, but the rest of the world has moved on.

[TouchScreen123]

Typing is sooooooooooo last decade...... People just dictate to their phones now. Pretty soon, improving the typing on a phone is going to be like making a better cassette cassette player. Sure some people still like cassettes, but the rest of the world has moved on.

Agreed 100% but there are still bugs in voice recognition. Like mistaking ''there'' for ''they're'' etc. Physical keyboards are still nessasary so you can manually correct the mistakes voice recognition makes. Hopefully one day soon we can abolish keyboards like cassettes.

[mediadavid]

Kindle users don't have access to Google store. Would you call installing apps from amazon side loading?

I know kindle is an android fork and Jolla isn't but the principle is the same. If they'll manage to get android apps to be installed directly from the phone and they would work as good as on android phone but android malware is sandboxed by Sailfish OS, they may be the next big thing.

I pre ordered.
We'll see.

No, installing apps from Kindle isn't side loading...its the same as downloading an android port from BlackBerry world. it's exactly the same in fact. (except that they will work a bit better as Kindle OS is Android). And downloading Android ports from Jolla store will also be exactly the same as downloading an android port from BlackBerry world.

But if you think that Jolla are going to get every Android developer to sell their apps on Jolla your fooling yourself. Look at Instagram on BlackBerry 10 - works nearly perfectly sideloaded, but Instagram haven't ported it...why? who knows.

Posted via CB10

[mediadavid]

In fact I did a minutes' worth of reading just there and found out straight away that, despite being Android, despite the weight of Amazon, Kindle store doesn't have 'all 750,000' Android apps. And you do in fact have to sideload if you want the others:

http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/story...ndle-fire-apps

Posted via CB10

[Pilchard]

I think we'll have a very clear idea of BlackBerry's future by the end of this year, but not much sooner.

In the meantime, we have a promising platform running on reasonably good hardware. No question, BB is further ahead than they were two years ago. Whether that's far enough to actually get them back into contention remains to be seen. Personally, I'm still optimistic.

I always enjoy your posts. I used to be optimistic but when I started reading the probable spec of the A10 was dual core and 720p my optimism drained away. I read a post by BelfastDespatcher a couple of days ago (he was invited to the UK preview of the Z10 so he is a Blackberry fanatic) and he sounded pretty unhappy (it was about BB10 not being stable when Thorsten Heins was swearing it was rock solid and never rebooted). There is a lot more negative sentiment in the forums too.

It makes me think about the Playbook forum. I was in there from the start, paying full whack for my Playbook, and there was a lot of negative sentiment. The moderators posted a sticky about "taking out the trolling trash" because there was so much negative sentiment. See how that ended? When Blackberry fans go negative, it doesn't bode well.

[Chris2183]

It means people with an obsession about 750 million apps on a mobile telephone are dumb, dumb, dumb and to say that BlackBerry phones aren't working because they don't have thirty billion apps like Apple phones do is just downright ********.

What is an app? A lot of the exact same functionality is available in a browser and on websites designed for mobile devices.

A browser is not going to let someone take a picture, edit it and simultaneously post to Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter like Snapseed and the Instagram app will.

A browser is not going to let you take a picture of a check and deposit it into your bank account like several banking apps already allow
https://www.wellsfargo.com/mobile/ap...our/take-photo

My wife and I were at a local farmers market where several vendors were taking credit card payments with the Square card reade app over their iPhones. Are they ******** for using an app?
https://forums.crackberry.com/e?link...token=B8oPXb1J

Like it or not apps are what currently drive the market. Apps are what keep Apple and Android on top, the lack of is what's keeping Wndows Phone and BB in the 3rd and 4th slots. I want BB to succeed just like I want Windows Phone to succeed as I like choices but until BB gets the app market to a competitive state they are going to struggle

[msps]

No, installing apps from Kindle isn't side loading...its the same as downloading an android port from BlackBerry world. it's exactly the same in fact. (except that they will work a bit better as Kindle OS is Android). And downloading Android ports from Jolla store will also be exactly the same as downloading an android port from BlackBerry world.

But if you think that Jolla are going to get every Android developer to sell their apps on Jolla your fooling yourself. Look at Instagram on BlackBerry 10 - works nearly perfectly sideloaded, but Instagram haven't ported it...why? who knows.

Posted via CB10

Ported app or sideloaded app IS NOT anywhere near the 'perfect' experience and convince Kindle store offer .

I'm not sure what Jolla experience would be. I know for sure it just cannot be worse than BlackBerry side loading joke

[Hazysky]

Jolla is doing things very much like Blackberry. They preferably want native apps but are open to ports.

The ports will most likely work the same way as on Blackberry 10.

Android apps not ported can be gotten from 3rd party sources. There was some talk of possibly using alternative app stores or streams but that has not yet been fully explained. Whether apk files have to be converted or not beforehand is also unkown.

All will become clear when they launch properly I am sure.

I have pre ordered a Jolla phone too . The fact that they will have less apps than BlackBerry for some time probably bothers me not.

Posted via CB10

[Mrblack7]

I really appreciate everyone's input. I have some thinking to do.

Thanks.

Posted via CB10

[Mr.Willie]

do you really believe for a moment that if the Z10 hardware would have been built by HTC and have been a rebranded HTC One that BB10 sales result would have been that much different? i say no. why? because it's not really about hardware. sure hardware, specs, and form factor is important - you need to hit a minimum bar, but what's so much more important is the OS - software, mindshare, and ecosystem.

IMO the Z10 could have been built on an HTC One and the results would not have been much different.

also - why would HTC, given their own struggles, want to partner with BB, and hitch their wagon to that dying horse? what does BB bring to the table for HTC? IMO BB hardware is not that bad - that's not the problem.

No, not the Z10, the A10. A limited partnership. Buy a million HTC Ones to rebrand, HTC still would sell the Android version. BB wouldn't have to worry about the expense of having second rate phones custom made, HTC would get sales from BB.

Having a hot phone is analogous to having a hot woman. If her looks are great (great hardware on the phone) but her personality stinks (no apps) then there is no basis for a long term relationship (return customer.)

[B]The Z10 hardware is fine. [B\] The problem is the BB10 OS. No dev wants, or cares about deving for BB10. Thus no apps, no customers, no sales...you see where this is going.

Its an Android and Apple world, or as I like to call it, the ''A Team.''...not the ''B'' (BB10) Team.

I happily type this on my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, but sigh as I look across the room at my $600 Playbook as it gathers dust. Wish I could go back to April 19, 2011. I'd have bought an iPad.

The problem is, the hardware is not that great and they charge a premium price for it. HTC One and Z10 cost the same at AT&T. It's like a trailer park hooker trying to charge high end hooker prices.

You still could have gotten an iPad.

<Snip>
Finally, there is point-of-sale. This is BB's other big problem. By relying on carrier stores and big-box retailers, BB is doomed to be one idiosyncratic player in a world of (1) Samsung/Android devices, (2) all the other Android devices, (3) iPhones, and (4) WP8 devices.

It kills me that Blackberry is giving up on their "Blackberry Stores". This is the other thing Apple did to come back from the dead. They opened the first Apple Stores in 2001, and everyone thought they were nuts. They were not nuts. Apple Stores are the most profitable retail space, per square foot, in the world. If their profitability drops by 1/2, they will still be tied for first (with Tiffany's). You go into an Apple Store to buy a phone, and they have iPhones. They don't have Samsungs or Nokias or HTCs or anything else. Your iPhone breaks, you go there, and a human being will help you. This is huge.

Nicely done. I get sick of hearing people claim that if MS wouldn't have "bailed out" Apple they wouldn't be here today. It wasn't a charity, it was a win win situation for all involved, including the consumer.

The only problem with the BlackBerry stores was were they making any money ? How much does it cost to rent space in an airport ? Did BB actually have any stores that people could go to without having an airline ticket ?

I was in a BB store in Atlanta airport (???) looking at cases/holsters. The gentleman was nice and polite and said "Here, let me help you." He opened the package, asked for my phone, installed the case, showed me the operation of it, and of course rang me up. It was appositive experience.

[Canuck671]

<a href=?http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/themes/go-gulf/blog/smartphone.jpg?><img src=?http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/th...martphone.jpg? alt=?Smartphone Users Statistics and Facts? width=?532? /></a><br />Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com <a href=?http://www.go-gulf.com/? > Web Design Company</a>

I'm sure that there is room for BlackBerry.

Posted via CB10

[jegs2]

hindsight is 20/20 but BB should have bought Palm in 2010. HP paid $1.2B back then. BB's market cap was $25B at the time today it's $5B so they probably could have afforded the $1.2B. they could have taken webOS and customized and tweaked it and used it for BB10. this would have been a modern, web-ready, touch-ready, virtual "turnkey OS" and would have gotten them a decent competitor YEARS earlier and saved billions in wasted goodwill, time, opportunity, and R&D.

Never thought of it that way before, but yeah, BB could have taken Web OS and modified it for their own use.

Too bad.

[njblackberry]

The only problem with the BlackBerry stores was were they making any money ? How much does it cost to rent space in an airport ? Did BB actually have any stores that people could go to without having an airline ticket ?

The stores weren't actually owned by BlackBerry. They were operated by Wireless Giant. They were in weird locations - airports? - and didn't differentiate themselves from any other mobile phone outlet. They didn't sell unbranded or unlocked phones. They were another reseller.

And they weren't marketed. Everyone I saw - I travel a lot - was empty.

[Loc22]

Speaking of re-boot, all phones does re-boot, just that the z10 got the wrongest timing sometimes. I have lost my reboot tho

Posted via CB10

Ya... even the iPhone, the all mighty has to be rebooted once in a while