[officially_juju]

First off... not bashing BlackBerry. I hope the company survives and love the phones. This is just a post on what you think RIM should have done, in hindsight, with the smartphone market change. Your answer may be as simple as, "Nothing different" to a host of things/ideas/products that should have happened.

It could make an interesting discussion...

[Tre Lawrence]

If I had been the CEO, I would have been caught napping too. I thought the original iPhone was a ludicrous concept.

In retrospect, as soon as Apple stumbled into 3rd party apps, we should have started to shore up our own ecosystem.

Hindsight makes winners of us all.

[officially_juju]

If I had been the CEO, I would have been caught napping too. I thought the original iPhone was a ludicrous concept.

In retrospect, as soon as Apple stumbled into 3rd party apps, we should have started to shore up our own ecosystem.

Hindsight makes winners of us all.

I think that's where it lies, too. The main issue, though, is BB10 should have been released around 2010 with the PlayBook to grow an ecosystem. I'm sure it would have been where Android is now. Too late, though

[toobs623]

I think that's where it lies, too. The main issue, though, is BB10 should have been released around 2010 with the PlayBook to grow an ecosystem. I'm sure it would have been where Android is now. Too late, though

This more or less, plus disgusting sums of money on advertising.

Posted via CB10

[Skatophilia]

The iPhone still is a ludicrous concept

[sexybabe88]

Tear up IOS, look at its potential and look at bbos's potential. And it'll be pretty clear that a major overhaul needs to start asap.

[sexybabe88]

Actually it's not really about what apple came up with. It's the CEOs deciding to sit on what they had and come up with more or less the same thing every year. 0 innovation or future planning. Blackberry is a product of pure luck without proper leadership to take it through to the next level.

[birdman_38]

Tear up IOS, look at its potential and look at bbos's potential. And it'll be pretty clear that a major overhaul needs to start asap.

A major overhaul of what?

[Troy Tiscareno]

Had BB bought QNX and started developing BB10 in 2007, and brought out the first version in 2010, it might have been possible to build a viable ecosystem on their own. They wouldn't be SO far behind the curve if they'd done it then. By the time they actually DID buy QNX in 2010, that was already the wrong decision (as I told people at the time). It was too late to try to start building an ecosystem from scratch in 2010 for a non-diversified, relatively small company like BB, especially given that they had NO cloud services to build from, and no experience in developing them.

So, by 2009, let's say, they should have adopted Android, and worked on their own skin/UI for it, and integrated BES and Balance into it for corporate use. BB would have been differentiated enough, with their security and their own hardware (with keyboards on some models) that they'd have done fine as an Android vendor. They might not have ever had more than, say, 15-20% of the Android market, but they'd have done just fine with that much of it, and they'd be competitive, and not hampered by a lack of an ecosystem. And even if they'd have failed, being an Android manufacturer, they'd have been a lot more valuable to another company than they are today, having to sell a failed OS and woefully inadequate ecosystem that no one wants to buy.

Still, I think that if BB had only their UI and MDM stuff to worry about, and didn't have all the hassles of trying to build an ecosystem, they'd have been able to be leaner and better focused, and I think they would OWN the corporate smartphone business. Their percentage might have not been huge, but, like Apple, they'd own much of the high-end users (corporate), and would command premium money for their handsets.

Trying to go it alone was just WAY too big of a job for BlackBerry, especially given the fact that they STARTED 3-4 years too late. It would have always been a struggle for BB, but 3 years earlier, those struggles would have been acceptable in the market, while no one today will tolerate it.