[eshropshire]

Don't forget the BES5 / BES10 drama. That cost a lot of enterprise customers, I might assume.

Canary you mean?
Yeah, that PlayBook consumed all the remaining oxygen in the proverbial coal mine...

:-D

(= resources better spent elsewhere! )

�   There's a Crack in the Berry right now...   �

Both were big issues. The Playbook was a complete disaster and was typical of the last 5 years of Jim and Mike at BB. They built an attitude inside Blackberry that they anything labeled BB would sell even if it was incomplete. The biggest problem was the delay it caused in BB10 release. Then the valuable time wasted trying to get BB10 running on the device

[idssteve]

QNX provided a supremely reliable foundation for BB10. A giant leap beyond BBOS reliability. BUT, they clearly abandoned many years of BBOS' GUI experience. Where is previous smartphone experience in QNX or Dan's resume? PlayBook was their ONLY BlackBerry exposure AFAIK? I've never detected that BB10 developers understood BlackBerry or why anyone would even want one. The guys in the QNX trenches might not have been there entirely by first choice. They were "purchased" and tasked with developing an OS for a smartphone they might not have even liked. ?? What we got seems to be more like Dan's vision of what a smartphone should be, IMO. It could have carried ANY name but BlackBerry (DanBerry?) and few would notice, IMO.

It could be argued that fresh start might have been exactly what RIM needed at that point. BUT building a new OS, and arguably a new company, out of thin air required resources and time that were orders of magnitude beyond anything Mike or Dan had available. Especially with tech monsters like Apple and Google sucking that "thin air" out of the room. Gateway's QNX-Amiga project could be argued to have been over promised and under delivered. From what I recall of that attempt, schedules slipped and features sacrificed. Sound familiar? Developing projects into maturity might not be their greatest attribute, IMO.

When you think about how miserable BBOS's memory limitations had to be to work with, who ever was developing BBOS really deserves admiration. Especially its GUI. An obvious labor of love for someone, somewhere. They clearly didn't understand, or maybe even not agree with, the Storm rush job project. BUT, they had amassed invaluable GUI experience that might have aided to direct BB10's functional maturity in timely fashion?? Imagine if BB10.3.2 could have been its initial release...

Oh well... Monday morning armchair quarterbacking aside, all we can do is prepare for the next game by learning from the last one.

[roadblochd]

Ok so much for implicit context.
I meant that BB10 users who don't want apps and who vehemently mistrust Google are not even in the vicinity of the target audience for the Priv.

BB10 users are not a big enough user base to support BB10.
BB10 fans who wish to avoid google services and apps are a small subset of the group above.

Implying that Priv sales are low because this utterly insignificant group won't buy an full-on android device is a real stretch.

Howso? You've just explained it in your post. BlackBerry have alienated the few loyal customers that remained by seemingly going all-in with Android handsets and seemingly abandoning BB10. Low Priv sales demonstrate that (most) BlackBerry fans are not interested in an Android phone.

Posted via CB10

[DrBoomBotz]

Howso? You've just explained it in your post. BlackBerry have alienated the few loyal customers that remained by seemingly going all-in with Android handsets and seemingly abandoning BB10. Low Priv sales demonstrate that (most) BlackBerry fans are not interested in an Android phone.

Posted via CB10

If you didn't get it the first time I doubt further applications will be effective.

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

There's no way that Android apps were ever going to "integrate properly" in BB10. To believe otherwise is like believing in Voodoo. Android apps were written to run on Android, with Android UI and notifications and Google Play Services and so on. You can only fake so much of that before you run into things that just can't be fooled.

The whole idea of relying on another platform's apps was an idea doomed to failure from the beginning. It's simply not sustainable - only native apps are sustainable over time, and BB was between a rock and a hard place: devs didn't want to develop for BB10 native (too small of a market, bad ROI), and having the Android Runtime actually made them even less interested in developing for BB10 - BUT it made BB10 somewhat viable for a percentage of users, at least for a while. But as I predicted here a few years ago, Google continued to tighten down apps and more and more apps integrated Google Services, breaking apps that formerly ran okay on the Runtime. Fewer and fewer users were willing to put up with the hassle and uncertainty, and BB10's marketshare fell and fell.

The thing is the RUNTIME was never meant to be used as it is today. They plans were that it would allow some developers to port over their apps immediately.... with the hope that in time they would convert their apps over to the much coveted "built for BlackBerry" title.

But the user base wasn't there to even make porting of apps profitable... muchless building ones natively.

Apple created the App craze with the iPod, the iPhone just moved it to another level. BlackBerry comes along six years later... they really didn't have a chance. The few faithful BlackBerry developers were in many cases far behind the App Houses that were producing for Android and iOS. And it really came down to the MAIN Social apps and games that "everyone" else had access too. In 2013 you launch a phone without Instagram... it isn't going to sell very well.

[DrBoomBotz]

The thing is the RUNTIME was never meant to be used as it is today. They plans were that it would allow some developers to port over their apps immediately.... with the hope that in time they would convert their apps over to the much coveted "built for BlackBerry" title.

And that, as with many things that BlackBerry has attempted, was never a realistic plan.

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

And that, as with many things that BlackBerry has attempted, was never a realistic plan.

After cross platform BBM... many here wondered how long it would even take. But then you add in the whole "who would want them" question. It just didn't seem to be a viable project.

[ubizmo]

The thing is the RUNTIME was never meant to be used as it is today. They plans were that it would allow some developers to port over their apps immediately.... with the hope that in time they would convert their apps over to the much coveted "built for BlackBerry" title.

As I recall, I defended this approach when BB10 was first launched. It would buy them time, then the native apps would come. It was, I now recognize, delusional.

If they had launched without the runtime, BBW would have been almost empty, particular with respect to "name" apps. That would have made BB10 DOA. But the Android runtime also effectively sandbagged BB10 development, as many here pointed out at the time. They were right.

Logically, from the two premises "If R then DOA" and "If not-R then DOA" we can infer "DOA".

[JeepBB]

As I recall, I defended this approach when BB10 was first launched. It would buy them time, then the native apps would come. It was, I now recognize, delusional.

If they had launched without the runtime, BBW would have been almost empty, particular with respect to "name" apps. That would have made BB10 DOA. But the Android runtime also effectively sandbagged BB10 development, as many here pointed out at the time. They were right.

Logically, from the two premises "If R then DOA" and "If not-R then DOA" we can infer "DOA".

Yup, one of those many nay-sayers was me! (You're not surprised are you? )

The idea that developers would release a "stop-gap" Android app whilst they worked on producing a BB10-native app to do the same thing as their stop-gap Android app always struck me as being a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature.

I argued that people are basically lazy, and would always take the easy route of releasing their Android App to work under the Android RT... and, if that sold well, they might develop another Android app for the ART. I could never see any incentive for those devs to re-spin their apps as native apps... and, as it turns out, I was right.

I may be cynical. I may be a pessimist. I am a pretty good judge of human nature... the cynicism and pessimism helps!

[conite]

I argued that people are basically lazy, and would always take the easy route of releasing their Android App to work under the Android RT... and, if that sold well, they might develop another Android app for the ART. I could never see any incentive for those devs to re-spin their apps as native apps... and, as it turns out, I was right.

Except many developers never took the easy route either. Look at Netflix and Instagram.

Without the Runtime, we would have neither right now (and countless others of course).

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

Yup, one of those many nay-sayers was me! (You're not surprised are you? )

The idea that developers would release a "stop-gap" Android app whilst they worked on producing a BB10-native app to do the same thing as their stop-gap Android app always struck me as being a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature.

I argued that people are basically lazy, and would always take the easy route of releasing their Android App to work under the Android RT... and, if that sold well, they might develop another Android app for the ART. I could never see any incentive for those devs to re-spin their apps as native apps... and, as it turns out, I was right.

I may be cynical. I may be a pessimist. I am a pretty good judge of human nature... the cynicism and pessimism helps!

If they had converted 70 million users to BB10... it might have worked. But it was clear within one quarter that BB10 was a flop, and was not going to have 100's or even 10's of millions of users.

Looking back we can all see things they could have done better (that's easy). Some even predicted if they didn't do certain things they would fail (guy named Kevin did a write up the summer before, he even bet a car they'd have Instagram). BB10 needed a miracle to gain traction in 2013.... and they just never got one.

[JeepBB]

Except many developers never took the easy route either. Look at Netflix and Instagram.

Meh, I'd argue that's still the devs being lazy and protecting their own interests through minimum effort. Netflix and the others took one look at the ROI BB10 was likely to add... and passed.

Without the Runtime, we would have neither right now (and countless others of course).

Old-hands here will recall that I predicted that the Android RT would ultimately be the death of BB10 because it would enable developers to take the lazy/easy option... so the BB10 native app ecosystem would never grow... devs would neglect their ported Android apps... the ecosystem would wither... and folk wouldn't buy a phone without apps. At the time, a time of rainbows and unicorns when the Android RT was going to be the enabling bridge bringing zillions of erstwhile Android apps to BB10, I was roundly ridiculed for my opinion.

Shame it's taken this long to be vindicated... I doubt there's a cash prize for calling it correctly. LOL

[JeepBB]

If they had converted 70 million users to BB10... it might have worked. But it was clear within one quarter that BB10 was a flop, and was not going to have 100's or even 10's of millions of users.

Looking back we can all see things they could have done better (that's easy). Some even predicted if they didn't do certain things they would fail (guy named Kevin did a write up the summer before, he even bet a car they'd have Instagram). BB10 needed a miracle to gain traction in 2013.... and they just never got one.

Ah, Kevin's car... LOL ... I'd forgotten that.

Not his finest hour. Promised to gift a car to a random CB'er if Instagram never came by a specific date, so certain was he that Instagram was a dead-cert... it didn't come... and the "car" became a R/C toy car which (to his credit) was donated to a lucky CB'er.

[conite]

Meh, I'd argue that's still the devs being lazy and protecting their own interests through minimum effort. Netflix and the others took one look at the ROI BB10 was likely to add... and passed.



Old-hands here will recall that I predicted that the Android RT would ultimately be the death of BB10 because it would enable developers to take the lazy/easy option... so the BB10 native app ecosystem would never grow... devs would neglect their ported Android apps... the ecosystem would wither... and folk wouldn't buy a phone without apps. At the time, a time of rainbows and unicorns when the Android RT was going to be the enabling bridge bringing zillions of erstwhile Android apps to BB10, I was roundly ridiculed for my opinion.

Shame it's taken this long to be vindicated... I doubt there's a cash prize for calling it correctly. LOL

My point is that the Runtime is a red herring. I think it was irrelevant in the grand scheme of bringing apps to native BB10 - as they weren't going to come anyway.

At least it stretched out how long I was able to stay on BB10 before I had to move on (to the Priv).

If the Runtime never existed, I firmly believe the current app situation would be much worse for BB10. Hard to prove of course.

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

Ah, Kevin's car... LOL ... I'd forgotten that.

Not his finest hour. Promised to gift a car to a random CB'er if Instagram never came by a specific date, so certain was he that Instagram was a dead-cert... it didn't come... and the "car" became a R/C toy car which (to his credit) was donated to a lucky CB'er.

The not his finest hour was the BB10 launch haircut.... that was amateur hour at its finest. Just made the whole event even harder to watch....

They tried to show they were "connected" with their fans (something they avoided in the past), but while he was the "number one guy" I'm not sure he really represented who BlackBerry was trying to appeal too. Combined with Thor trying to channel his Steve Jobs.....

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

If the Runtime never existed..... why would anyone have bought the PlayBook? No Apps and no Email (for 9 months).....

It would have for sure forced them to reconsider EVERYTHING a few years before BB10 was launched. Still don't understand all the talk of the PlayBook being a "test bed" for the new platform, and yet no one paid any attention to the warning signs.

[idssteve]

Soooo.... Possibilities forward?

Obviously Droid is in BB's plan. Assuming they don't wreck their name in Droidland with yet another half baked rush job, what can BB offer consumers to draw them from Samsung? PKB? Security? (with Google involved?? Lol). Any way droid can accommodate tool belt functions?

Future for BB10? Premium priced security & reliability prioritized government & enterprise markets? Even with premium device pricing, what criteria establishes minimum sustainable device production numbers? Qualcomm's driver devs? Other thoughts?

Inquiring minds (management ) will want to know...

[Bbnivende]

If someone asked me why they should buy an Android BlackBerry , I would say - the PKB. BlackBerry needs some better PKB options. The Vienna and Iconic (9900 style) are needed soon.

[will308]

iPhone users can't use their phones either. I swear everytime I have someone elses iPhone in my hand when I double click the front button they have a 100 applications running because they didn't know how to close them.

yep so true ,my mate has an iPhone and he has no clue how to use it he don't even have his email account on it

[donnation]

yep so true ,my mate has an iPhone and he has no clue how to use it he don't even have his email account on it

Yeah so having a BlackBerry would surely cure that problem

[TgeekB]

yep so true ,my mate has an iPhone and he has no clue how to use it he don't even have his email account on it

Typical iPhone user. They're all dumb and just play candy crush. I know since I started using an iPhone my IQ has dropped 75 points. They may have to institutionalize me.

[JeepBB]

Typical iPhone user. They're all dumb and just play candy crush. I know since I started using an iPhone my IQ has dropped 75 points. They may have to institutionalize me.

When I get my iPhone 6s+, can I choose to play Angry Birds instead, or is Candy Crush compulsory?

[TgeekB]

When I get my iPhone 6s+, can I choose to play Angry Birds instead, or is Candy Crush compulsory?

You have to earn the privilege. Candy crush first, then angry birds. It's the way all us dodos do it.

[will308]

Yeah so having a BlackBerry would surely cure that problem

emm no what the point is (ill make it simple for you to understand) there are ppl with iphone who have no idea on how to use them, they get them because they like to be in the crowd

[tdyhedge]

And then it's Two Dots and MineCraft once you're fully assimilated.

Q10SQN100-2/10.3.2.2876