Being a fan of BlackBerry technology != being a fan of BlackBerry Ltd., its management, its direction, etc. The BlackBerry company and products that I was interested in were built around a unique proprietary operating system, with a very elegant and well designed user experience and powerful foundational operating system.
BlackBerry Ltd. management has been making strategic and logistical errors time and time again over the last 4 or 5 years, and I (foolishly, perhaps, in retrospect) kept on hoping they'd get it together and find a way to make products based on BlackBerry 10 sustainable, which would in turn generate further investment in the platform.
The fact is that I still believe a sustainable business based on BB10 was possible, until BlackBerry Ltd. basically announced to the universe that BB10 is dead, making statements that encourage developers to switch their efforts to Android development, etc., etc., etc. and the Ron Louks bait-and-switch with the Slider was really the last straw. Anyone who makes emotional OR financial investments in BlackBerry technology is foolish: BlackBerry has shown time and time again that they care very little for their own product or most loyal customers. They don't deserve our interest, nevermind loyalty or our hard-earned money by way of investing in their products.
I will be glad if BlackBerry goes completely bankrupt, because when you treat your customers the way BlackBerry treats its customers, that's the outcome that SHOULD happen. I'm not gratified by a company going bankrupt due to sheer ineptitude, which BlackBerry management has exhibited on numerous occasions... but it's clear to me now that BlackBerry investors and the C-level executives just don't care about BlackBerry customers. The glib comment Chen made when the Priv running Android was announced about the CrackBerry guys "killing him" or whatever showed how very un-seriously he takes his core customer base. You know, the BB10 enthusiasts. The ones that kept BlackBerry ALIVE over the past few years.
BlackBerry should be yet another object lesson in what happens to a company and the investors' share value when they let management treat customers with contempt, not just out of desperation, but as standard operating procedure.
BlackBerry being successful would be their reward for how the last 6 years went down: each successive management team taking their turn and, in the end, each shoving their customers under a bus with a twinkle in their eye. I make the exception of Jim and Mike: they may have missed the boat on the rise of the capacitive touchscreen 'craze', but I don't think they ever had it in their minds to just abandon their core customers like whatever happened with Thor and subsequently with Chen (with Louks whispering in his ear).
I'm willing to admit everything above is subjective, even outright wrong, so no one needs to reply with counterarguments, because the fact is I don't give a damn.
This poor fool is bound to be fired for being honest. BlackBerry management: mortified that a high-ranking member of BlackBerry's management team would ever not try to mislead their customers!