[prplhze2000]

Read the book. It was a very dysfunctional organization that had no clue as to how to execute or meet deadlines. It didn't know how to operate at a basic level.


Chen had to deal with all that before he could get around to cranking out a competitive phone.

Posted via CB10

[Elephant_Canyon]

Its odd that everyone blames BB10 for Blackberry's failure.

Except that isn't happening. Most of us are saying BB10 failed, not that it was responsible for the overall failure of Blackberry as a company.

[KemKev]

Ha! Yep... 5 Stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.

Definitely bargaining. A lot of anger though in other threads still. Those who have moved on to Priv's have made it to acceptance.

Even those five stages are disputed...

[ljfong]

Yes, I agree.

Whilst Conite is correct in that BB threw in a lot of time, money and effort in launching BB10, it was all kind of unfocused as if they really didn't know who their sales target really was... consumer? business? both?

I think there was also the arrogant assumption that all BBOS users would adopt the new BB10 platform pretty much from day 1. In a kind of "if you build it, they will come" way. Unfortunately "Field of Dreams" was a fantasy, and so it turned out was any hope of the millions of BBOS guys switching to BB10 - many (most?) still haven't!

IIRC : of the 30M BB userbase, 20M are still on BBOS.

Introducing a new OS platform, with few Apps, and with an entirely new group of users (having abandoned millions of your existing BBOS users) was always going to be an uphill struggle and the reality is that it was likely over for BB10 before the end of 2013.

With the way you said it, BB10 platform release was reminiscent of PlayBook release. A new platform with very few apps, no compatibility layer whatsoever to the previous generation platform, which pretty much guaranteed its failure. The heroic back-breaking backward compatibility of Intel x86 processors and Microsoft Windows make a lot of sense. Even Apple included Rosetta for running apps written for PowerPC architecture for a while for Mac OS X.

[anon(3983727)]

Except that isn't happening. Most of us are saying BB10 failed, not that it was responsible for the overall failure of Blackberry as a company.

Sorry.. you are right not "everyone" says that. It is said far too often in these forums though. I would say BB10 failed to single handedly bring Blackberry back to black. That is an impossible task anyway for an OS with crap hardware and no advertisement

[Troy Tiscareno]

It's too late now and I will use mine till it dies but what I will never understand is why with all the money and effort at the start they didn't take the top 100 apple and Google apps and make a bb10 version.

Do you think that BB or any company simply waves a magic wand and BOOM! - apps now exist? Most of the Top 100 apps don't have public APIs, which means there's no legal, licensed way to write an app or communicate to the servers the service runs on. Some apps might be reverse-engineered, but that's much more difficult and time-consuming, and it's still going to violate the company's TOS and result in BB getting sued.

But even if those companies all had public APIs, you're still giving BB way too much credit. Facebook and Twitter have public APIs, and the BB10 apps for these, which were made by BB, were and are a mess (Twitter less so, because it's much simpler). And even BB's own Contacts app has been badly broken for 2+ years. If they can't get their own apps right, and 2 outside apps right, how would they get 100 right? And how many more devs would they have had to hire to get them done - all professional devs who want salaries, benefits, and generate payroll taxes - a massive overhead cost?

It's easy to say "they should have just gotten the Top 100 apps somehow", but in reality, doing that is impossible if you don't have the support of the owners of those apps.

[JeepBB]

With the way you said it, BB10 platform release was reminiscent of PlayBook release. A new platform with very few apps, no compatibility layer whatsoever to the previous generation platform, which pretty much guaranteed its failure. The heroic back-breaking backward compatibility of Intel x86 processors and Microsoft Windows make a lot of sense. Even Apple included Rosetta for running apps written for PowerPC architecture for a while for Mac OS X.

With the clarity of hindsight, the similarities between the Playbook launch (and subsequent events) and BB10 are definitely there.

For me, the biggest single mis-step in the whole BB10 story was near the beginning. BB were reputedly working on a BBOS RT to work under BB10, but abandoned it in favour of the Android RT that ultimately launched with BB10.

With a BBOS RT within BB10, I suspect most of the existing BBOS users would have moved to BB10 - if not to the Z10, then to the Q10 - there would be no reason not to. They'd have all the features they knew and loved from BBOS but in a faster, more powerful handset and, over time, would probably have migrated to using BB10 features more and more knowing that they always had the safety-net of the BBOS RT to fall back on.

With 60M BBOS users owning a BB10 handset, plus the 10M or so new buyers that bought BB10 without prior BBOS experience, BB would have had a userbase of 70M+. With that many users, enough to generate a decent ROI, it is likely that Devs would have brought the "must-have" Apps to BB10; the ecosystem would have built-up, and BB's world and prospects would look very different right now.

Why BB chose to abandon their huge number of existing subscribers in the hope of gaining new ones is something I've never understood. As you say, other companies have recognised that a successful transition to a new platform/OS involves bringing as many of your existing users with you when you transition. Smart companies provide an easy route for those existing users to continue their journey with your new platform. But not BlackBerry, they just abandoned their vast BBOS userbase and started from zero again. I've previously put it down to simple arrogance. I'm sure that MikeL truly believed that releasing handsets with the BB logo on the back was enough to cause existing BBOS users to buy into BB10 without further incentive.

If so, and as others have said, MikeL's arrogance probably did more to destroy the future of the company he built than any other event.

We'll never know what might have been with a BBOS RT...

[ljfong]

...
Why BB chose to abandon their huge number of existing subscribers in the hope of gaining new ones is something I've never understood. As you say, other companies have recognised that a successful transition to a new platform/OS involves bringing as many of your existing users with you when you transition. Smart companies provide an easy route for those existing users to continue their journey with your new platform. But not BlackBerry, they just abandoned their vast BBOS userbase and started from zero again. I've previously put it down to simple arrogance. I'm sure that MikeL truly believed that releasing handsets with the BB logo on the back was enough to cause existing BBOS users to buy into BB10 without further incentive.

If so, and as others have said, MikeL's arrogance probably did more to destroy the future of the company he built than any other event.

We'll never know what might have been with a BBOS RT...

Mike L probably applied the typical engineer attitude of "starting fresh in hope of undoing everything that was wrong" in BlackBerry 10. A software system re-write with no continuation path in between is an extremely risky strategy of moving forward. It is a well known software engineering problem but some engineers still make the mistake because starting fresh, doing things right this time, free from all those legacy ugliness is so appealing.

IIRC, BlackBerry even managed to doghouse BBOS developers treating them like second class citizens while BB10 developers moved forward without any consultation of the old BBOS devs yielding the release of BlackBerry 10 system that did not feel like a BlackBerry product. If I were a BBOS dev, I would probably feel bitterly vindicated today.

[KNEBB]

As the years have gone by and I began to wonder if BlackBerry10 is simply a casualty in the power struggle for the direction of the company.
And if there were certain decisions made regarding the Operating System and the BlackBerry10 devices to present less of a conflict of interest to the new BlackBerry objective.
Had BB10 been more successful, could the thought of being a strictly software company been met with more opposition.

Posted via CB10

[DrBoomBotz]

Mike L probably applied the typical engineer attitude of "starting fresh in hope of undoing everything that was wrong" in BlackBerry 10. A software system re-write with no continuation path in between is an extremely risky strategy of moving forward. It is a well known software engineering problem but some engineers still make the mistake because starting fresh, doing things right this time, free from all those legacy ugliness is so appealing.

IIRC, BlackBerry even managed to doghouse BBOS developers treating them like second class citizens while BB10 developers moved forward without any consultation of the old BBOS devs yielding the release of BlackBerry 10 system that did not feel like a BlackBerry product. If I were a BBOS dev, I would probably feel bitterly vindicated today.

There is much truth in what you say but IMHO BBOS needed to be replaced.

[Troy Tiscareno]

As the years have gone by and I began to wonder if BlackBerry10 is simply a casualty in the power struggle for the direction of the company.
And if there were certain decisions made regarding the Operating System and the BlackBerry10 devices to present less of a conflict of interest to the new BlackBerry objective.

The main struggle was that Mike simply didn't WANT to leave BBOS behind. It has been his idea, and he couldn't let it go, which is why he refused to start working on a modern alternative for so long. I'm positive there were people at the company who tried to open people's eyes, but Mike in particular didn't like to have his decisions questioned, so people quickly learned that disagreeing with Mike wasn't good for their careers. Thus, Mike had a cult of "yes men" around him, reinforcing all of his bad decisions. Further, being isolated in Waterloo, surrounded by people who'd largely never used anything but a BB phone, there were few people around him who were likely to have a lot of experience with anything else. Mike made RIM an echo chamber inside a protective bubble - new ideas didn't easily penetrate the bubble and Mike's opinions got echoed inside of it.

The years Mike wasted were absolutely critical - there was only a small window of time where a mobile OS would have a chance to establish itself, and RIM blew through those years focusing on the wrong things. By the time they decided to buy QNX and start the BB10 project in 2010, it was already too late. Plenty of people could see that then - I sure could, but I wasn't the only one - and the only way they stood a chance with BB10 was to come up with some new, paradigm-shifting "must have" that every consumer would be willing to drop iOS and Android for.

Well, the Hub and Peak & Flow weren't it, and thus BB10 simply didn't stand a chance, despite its technical achievements. It wasn't that the OS was bad - it wasn't; at least, not by 10.2.1 - it's just that it was irrelevant in the marketplace by 2013.

[thurask]

Mike L probably applied the typical engineer attitude of "starting fresh in hope of undoing everything that was wrong" in BlackBerry 10. A software system re-write with no continuation path in between is an extremely risky strategy of moving forward. It is a well known software engineering problem but some engineers still make the mistake because starting fresh, doing things right this time, free from all those legacy ugliness is so appealing.

Continually building on top of the same Jenga tower is equally risky, though.

[Bbnivende]

With the clarity of hindsight, the similarities between the Playbook launch (and subsequent events) and BB10 are definitely there.

For me, the biggest single mis-step in the whole BB10 story was near the beginning. BB were reputedly working on a BBOS RT to work under BB10, but abandoned it in favour of the Android RT that ultimately launched with BB10.

With a BBOS RT within BB10, I suspect most of the existing BBOS users would have moved to BB10 - if not to the Z10, then to the Q10 - there would be no reason not to. They'd have all the features they knew and loved from BBOS but in a faster, more powerful handset and, over time, would probably have migrated to using BB10 features more and more knowing that they always had the safety-net of the BBOS RT to fall back on.

With 60M BBOS users owning a BB10 handset, plus the 10M or so new buyers that bought BB10 without prior BBOS experience, BB would have had a userbase of 70M+. With that many users, enough to generate a decent ROI, it is likely that Devs would have brought the "must-have" Apps to BB10; the ecosystem would have built-up, and BB's world and prospects would look very different right now.

Why BB chose to abandon their huge number of existing subscribers in the hope of gaining new ones is something I've never understood. As you say, other companies have recognised that a successful transition to a new platform/OS involves bringing as many of your existing users with you when you transition. Smart companies provide an easy route for those existing users to continue their journey with your new platform. But not BlackBerry, they just abandoned their vast BBOS userbase and started from zero again. I've previously put it down to simple arrogance. I'm sure that MikeL truly believed that releasing handsets with the BB logo on the back was enough to cause existing BBOS users to buy into BB10 without further incentive.

If so, and as others have said, MikeL's arrogance probably did more to destroy the future of the company he built than any other event.

We'll never know what might have been with a BBOS RT...

BlackBerry thought that legacy users in emerging countries in like Nigeria, South Africa, Indonesia and India etc would continue to buy cheap BBOS devices and or keep on using friend and family BBOS phones to take advantage of cheap data plans. They really wanted a soft landing to lessen the decline rate of service revenue.

This interesting article provides some context to the failure to migrate in the Enterprise sector.

https://www.aabacosmallbusiness.com/...155239296.html



Below is an interesting snapshot of the conventional wisdom existing in November 2011. The problem areas were noted but glossed over. The pitfalls came true but the advantages did not .

http://emilycatanzarite.com/pdfs/Mar...rry%20Colt.pdf

The Colt was cancelled - it morphed into London which ultimately hot the market as a Z10 ( upgraded specs)

I am not sure what BlackBerry could have done in 2011/2012. They had three distinct user groups, Enterprise, Emerging Nations and consumers primarily in North America and the UK . There was no one fix all solution.

Apparently the Carriers in North America nixed the Milan a BB7 Torch like device in late 2011.

Hindsight tells me that they should have updated the 9900 for Enterprise users and converted to Android for consumers. They could have then devoted all of their time to improving their all touch hardware and BES. At some point in 2013 or 2014 - the Enterprise phone would have been Android as well.

The Playbook was the pigeon in the coal mine.

[to boldly go]

"The Playbook was the pigeon in the coal mine."

Maybe, but I'm still happily using mine. All the weird posting problems i have HERE do not occur with the playbook.

I suppose i still hope people will discover BlackBerry is better and we can halt this self fulfilling prophecy stuff. After all, my cds are obsolete and im playing records again.

Now that was a REAL bad analogy, it's not what I meant.

But it is true.

Blackberry thought just being better was good enough. So did I.

[Troy Tiscareno]

Blackberry thought just being better was good enough. So did I.

BB thought being better at things that weren't most people's priority was good enough, and that they didn't really have to deliver on the things that were most people's priority. That attitude has Mike Lazaridis all over it.

[DrBoomBotz]

BB thought being better at things that weren't most people's priority was good enough, and that they didn't really have to deliver on the things that were most people's priority. That attitude has Mike Lazaridis all over it.

As I recall in the months leading up to its release the key selling point that BlackBerry was going to highlight was "true" multitasking. I have always suspected that they touted this ability because they didn't have time to tweak the scheduler etc to be more battery friendly. Outrageous claims are still being made about "true" multitasking in these forums.

[DonHB]

Would it have been interesting if BlackBerry had pursued third party developer tool vendors to support the platform so software development could avoid the closed gardeness of Apple and Google making BlackBerry World's primary reason for existence to be the vetting of the security and privacy of apps and services?

Instead BB10 is a fork of QNX (Cascades is not Qt), its Android runtime doesn't support Flow and no tools were provided to enable BBOS Java apps to run on the Dalvik VM.

Maybe, the work being done in IoT convinced John Chen that QNX is good but the developer situation on BB10 needs to be rethought for better synergy with what QNX Systems is doing?

[Tre Lawrence]

4- I do not need all the apps of Android and ios and I believe there are many people like me

Yes, but not enough to sustain BB10.

[anon(9710735)]

If the older Bold phones can still be used and utilized fully in this day and age without the need for BIS, I would totally cling onto a Bold 9900 for dear life because it is to me the best BlackBerry phone ever.

Posted via CB10

[ckvinod]

Yes. I agree entirely. Hope the folks at BBRY do realise that millions of people have not purged their Bold 9900. They are hoping that these spectacular phones would one day be unchained of the BIS. In fact, I won't be surprised that if BBRY gives an option to run these phones with normal data plans, Bold will boldly become a saviour for the ship called BBRY.

[Calvin8181]

Ya.. make it a subscription based OS.

Posted via CB10

[BB_PP]

If Blackberry OS10 would have been released a year before it officially was, then they might have had a chance, but as other folks have stated. The bar was already set by then and Android and IOS where well on their way of being the dominant platforms.

Even after 3 years of launch BlackBerry can't educate consumers basic swipe up and down gestures . I can operate iPhone, windows and android but none of mentioned 3 platform user can operate a bb10 device. No advertising and lack of advocacy. No advertising no billboards

Posted via Priv...

[southlander]

They tried. Trying isn't enough. Timing counts. Too late.

Posted via the CrackBerry App for Android

[BB_PP]

If we like to watch objectively what BlackBerry has done with its new OS 10 it is really easy to conclude it didn't try enough. For three years now:

1- none of the phones released were ever updated
2- they have assumed people only want apps and just tried to compete with android and ios leaving their own customers
3- I love each and every device of bb10 and I find the Os highly elegant.
4- I do not need all the apps of Android and ios and I believe there are many people like me
5- the first lesson in adopting a platform is that we need to cater from underrated producers to satisfy left clients. We became left clients now with no interest in android (I really have tried to live with an android but hated it, got a Sony, a Samsung and an iphone).
6- blackberry is lacking consistency in its offerings and it gets me mad to like a product and then find myself having to buy it again because they did not upgrade it. BlackBerry OS did not build it's clout over a year but over 10 years of consistency and evolution of products perfecting them. While on BB10 we just got different devices with little in common between them and waited for developers to make apps for us.
7- I have no idea what to get now after 1 year and a month with the classic. Another classic? Going back to q10?

Blackberry is forcing us to adopt android, if I want android I can get any phone for 100$, I won't get BlackBerry. I guess BlackBerry should at least keep a phone (hybrid between classic and passport) that caters for all of us with bb10 and update it every year, practically like apple does with iPhone. It will sell 500 or 600 000 a quarter or whatever but at least it will keep it in the hardware business without losing much since it will be only an evolution of 1 product instead of working on 2-3 everytime.

Posted via CB10

Same way American cars were failed out of US and Toyota gained market! BlackBerry's main focus was US consumers only

Posted via Priv...

[bakron1]

Same way American cars were failed out of US and Toyota gained market! BlackBerry's main focus was US consumers only

Posted via Priv...

There is more to American cars not selling outside the US then advertising. Other countries have high import taxes on luxury goods and the US doesn't. Our politicians make laws to give our manufacturing base away for cheap labor rather then making laws to protect our industry.

I have been in the auto industry for all of my life and the so called quality of the imports is not what it once was, they too have went to using cheap parts and labor to increase their profitability.