[Azer27]

I thought about it, but to me so great company such as BlackBerry wouldn't show mock-ap, they must be shown a real device.

Posted via my BlackBerry Classic

[joeldf]

You can "think" about it all you want, but it was a mock-up. It was a device that was still half a year from release at the time it was shown.

And it wasn't like it was handed out for everyone to handle.

Ron was on a stage, he held the black one up, slid out the keyboard, and then showed a white one (which was never released). Then, that was it.

[Invictus0]

There was a reason for the don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-it cameo: The device was little more than a mockup, with a backlight used to simulate an active screen. If you looked closely, the BlackBerry 10 home screen was visible -- no Android.

Work on the prototype began in earnest after BlackBerry launched the Passport, a squat-looking smartphone with a square screen, in September 2014.

https://www.cnet.com/news/inside-bla...-with-android/

IIRC, there were threads after the MWC reveal speculating whether the Priv/Venice was actually running Android in the mockup, well before any credible rumours.

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

https://www.cnet.com/news/inside-bla...-with-android/

IIRC, there were threads after the MWC reveal speculating whether the Priv/Venice was actually running Android in the mockup, well before any credible rumours.

At that point BB knew they were done with BB10....

Problem was timing - with the Classic just launched and the LEAP under contract to be built, they couldn't really admit that they were done with BB10 at that time.

[Invictus0]

At that point BB knew they were done with BB10....

Problem was timing - with the Classic just launched and the LEAP under contract to be built, they couldn't really admit that they were done with BB10 at that time.

Pretty much, best we could have hoped for at that point I think was a niche OS had BB10 sales picked up.

[curves2000]

One of the problems that John Chen inherited from the previous management team was some overly optimistic contracts from parts suppliers and manufactures.

I recall something when they had launched the BlackBerry Z10 and the initial sales optimism from the hardcore fans lead former CEO Thorsten Heins to increase production and order more phones etc. A few short months later they wrote down a huge portion of inventory.

John Chen comes into the fold back in the fall of 2013 and sees literally hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts for additional BlackBerry 10 hardware and parts. That's one of the reason why we kept getting slightly different versions of BlackBerry 10 devices. Devices such as the Classic contained very similar parts to the Q10 but it was designed software and hardware wise to address a lot of corporate and government concerns with removing the "toolbelt". It was a very well received phone for a BlackBerry in 2015,2016 and it was needed in order to address those contracts.

Once those contractual obligations stopped and BlackBerry is now out of hardware, that capital is now being deployed onto the software and service business. On the last conference call the CFO indicated that BlackBerry was expected to record approx $5 million in device revenue as they have depleted their inventory of devices.

Posted via CB10

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

One of the problems that John Chen inherited from the previous management team was some overly optimistic contracts from parts suppliers and manufactures.

I recall something when they had launched the BlackBerry Z10 and the initial sales optimism from the hardcore fans lead former CEO Thorsten Heins to increase production and order more phones etc. A few short months later they wrote down a huge portion of inventory.

John Chen comes into the fold back in the fall of 2013 and sees literally hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts for additional BlackBerry 10 hardware and parts. That's one of the reason why we kept getting slightly different versions of BlackBerry 10 devices. Devices such as the Classic contained very similar parts to the Q10 but it was designed software and hardware wise to address a lot of corporate and government concerns with removing the "toolbelt". It was a very well received phone for a BlackBerry in 2015,2016 and it was needed in order to address those contracts.

Once those contractual obligations stopped and BlackBerry is now out of hardware, that capital is now being deployed onto the software and service business. On the last conference call the CFO indicated that BlackBerry was expected to record approx $5 million in device revenue as they have depleted their inventory of devices.

Posted via CB10

Back in 2013 the idea of selling 10 million Z10 didn't really seem overly optimistic.... For a company that a had 80 million users and was selling 10's of millions of devices a year up to that point it was actually viewed as conservative.

Looking back, it is easy to see that they never really had a chance with BB10... it was too late.

[llamax]

Wish they would just open source the BB10 OS so it could take on a supported life of its own.

[joeldf]

Wish they would just open source the BB10 OS so it could take on a supported life of its own.

That will never happen as long as QNX is part of it, since QNX has a much bigger role for BlackBerry beyond BB10.

Take out QNX, and all that's basically left is the android runtime with no kernel and VM to run in. And android is already open sourced, but the runtime is not its own OS.