Is BlackBerry making the same mistrakes again and not responding to the market?
Okay so before anyone tries to rip on me and call me a "isheep" or "android fanboy," I currently use a z10 and have used a blackberry and only a blackberry for the last 6 years. I am currently a third year business university student and take public transit so I get to see a lot of peoples phone preferences daily. I just want to bring up the point of why I feel like BlackBerry is reverting to its old ways.......well maybe not totally, but enough to make me wonder.
When the z10 first came out I was in love with it; not to say that I'm still not but the love has definitely died down. I remember buying it out right the first day it came out in Canada and showing it off to all my friends. Everyone I showed was so impressed with it I definitely thought I won BlackBerry some new customers. Over the past year and however many months, the phones excitement level and the whole BlackBerry product lineups excitement level has dropped. My brother has a Q10 so I have got to play around with it many times and other than the QWERTY keyboard (which is a big deal breaker for some, I know), there isn't much else to it. In BB10, I can show off peek, flow, hub and than after that I have nothing. BBM is now cross platform so there goes that reasoning of owning a BlackBerry and many of the other functionalities are prevalent in other smartphones.
I recently took a trip to the US and had to use my moms Samsung S4 (I tried convincing her to go BB, she didn't budge) since it was unlocked unlike my z10. I thought I would hate it and hate the idea of the home button, which at first did seem a bit awkward....But I actually enjoyed using the phone. It was actually a really good phone and with the huge selection of apps I cant say I really missed my z10 that much. Now I read a lot around here how BlackBerry is for people who get things done and how they don't need snapchat or instagram (which I both have sideloaded and installed on my z10 AND use daily), but I cant say I agree with them. BlackBerrys were most common in the business environment and that was their stronghold, but just look at how much market share they have lost and the increase in BYOD. As a business student, I understand the concept of having a smartphone of getting things done and I would always agree that BlackBerry was the way to go. However, in the past year or so, and especially with the release of iOS7,Samsung Galaxy S5, and HTC One M8, I cant say that with confidence anymore. These phones do pretty much what BlackBerry 10 does with a wider selection of apps.
We've seen the updates rolled out to BlackBerry 10 and although they have improved the OS significantly since launch, there isn't much in terms of "newness" for lack of better terms. I mean we were so excited (myself included) about getting instant previews, but that is already standard in other OS's as well as the ability to download android apk's directly to our phone, other OS's have a native app experience. In contrast, we look at these android phones launching with heart rate monitors and finger print scanners and advanced processors, while they may be useless in the grand scheme of things, they at least show some sort of innovation. The Z30 launched being basically the same thing as the z10 with a bigger but less resolution screen. Combine that with a lack of marketing, where not that many people even know the z30 exists, why would anyone get one?
I don't mean to be so negative but after being around iOS 7 for so long and seeing many of my friends upgrade to the new HTC or Samsung phones in the last week or so, it really got me wondering about what BlackBerry has that it can sell to customers over these alternatives. These alternatives have a slew of new features such as the camera features, blink feed, touchwiz, etc and in BB10 our next update may change the main accent color to red.....
Sorry for the long post but really hope to see what you guys think.
(PS. I am referring to both hardware AND software for innovation)