[georgeeipi]

If it's the PKB that sets Blackberry apart, why should Blackberry build new phones that are limited to Android? Why not use the intellectual property bb has in PKBs and make keyboards for Apple and Android alike? i would buy a BB9900 style keyboard for my iOS devices and lay my 9900 to rest anyday. While bb is at it why not work with Apple and Android and develop a Hub app?

Sent from my BlackBerry 9900 using Tapatalk

[Troy Tiscareno]

Because the reality is that the vast majority don't care about PKBs. BB is the "best buggy whip" manufacturer in an era of the automobile. Even if no one disputes that their buggy whips are the best in the world, the world has moved on and no longer wants buggy whips.

Sure, BB could make their own version of the Typo keyboard for a few popular phones, but that's a relatively low-margin business, and frankly, BB is too big of a company to care about a business that small with low margins.

[Jay Wright2]

I wish you were WRONG, @ Troy. But unfortunately you are NOT! SMH..I Love the PKB.

The BlackBerry Guy

[BB Adict]

I wish you were WRONG, @ Troy. But unfortunately you are NOT! SMH..I Love the PKB.

The BlackBerry Guy

You just made his point. YOU love the keyboard. Take a look at the millions of phones out there. People have moved on from keyboards. The trend started around 2007 when the first iPhone was released.

Posted via CB10

[georgeeipi]

It may look like "people have moved on from keyboards" but it may have come about because the market is being fed with a cheaper alternative. Touch screens are cheap because they are just a flat plate of glass and they are widespread because they improve the manufacturer's potential profit margin. But they don't improve the useability of a device for entering text. Profit-margin and useability are two different issues.

[Denise in Los Angeles]

No.

People love all-touch phones. 99% of phones sold are all-touch. Apple and Samsung, Sony, LG and others make the phones that customers want to buy.

Posted via the Diva's beautiful Red Passport!

[jpoq]

Always used VKB phones and was ok with it till got a BlackBerry with PKB. Much better experience overall, specially writing lots of text. Very hard to go to VKB's again.

Posted via CB10

[georgeeipi]

does loving a phone make it more useable?

[Troy Tiscareno]

does loving a phone make it more useable?

This is about priorities. Very simply, 99.8% of the market has different priorities than you have. Few of them spend all day banging out emails on their phone, even though they could. Rather, they use their phones for all kinds of purposes, including custom industry-specific apps, research, entertainment, social media, as a still and/or video camera, web browser, remote control, and much more. Because they priorities the ability to do all of these things - and even things that don't yet exist but might exist tomorrow or next month or next year - they want a big display that takes up the majority of the phone because that makes the phone incredibly flexible.

You want a physical keyboard so you can bang out emails and messages all day, and that's more important to you than all of those other things. That's fine, but it means you are an outlier - way outside the mainstream - and as the marketshare of folks who share your priorities has shrunk to statistical irrelevance, the market can barely afford to accommodate folks who prioritize PKBs. Soon, it won't do so anymore. You might not like that reality, but not liking it isn't going to change it.

[georgeeipi]

@troy, absolutely love what you have written. Let me suggest that you have put forward a very interesting hypothesis. An alternative hypothesis is that manufacturers have the potential for a larger profit margin with touch� screens. So they have flooded the market with them and used some of their extra profits with clever marketing that has stimulated people to believe they are better off (after all that is what the advertising industry is built on). So we now have 2 hypotheses and these can be tested against each other.

[Denise in Los Angeles]

Just buy a Priv. It has a pkb. Problem solved.

Posted via the Diva's beautiful Red Passport!

[idssteve]

99% of phone sales are not BlackBerry. PKB or VKB. If VKB were THE solution to market success, Z30's fabulous vkb would be conquering markets. Clearly it's not so simple.

How often have many of those 99% ever saw, much less tried, PKB in a store? How do they know vkb is "better" if they've never really tried pkb? Where's the "smartphone Olympics" proving which is superior?

Most folks buy regular grade gasoline for their cars. Does that make it "better" than premium grades? Does that mean producers should ONLY offer regular grade?

Automobiles outsell aircraft 99+ to 1. Does that mean Boeing, Airbus, etc should abandon aircraft and jump in to an already overcrowded automotive market??

Niche markets are, almost by definition, relatively low volume markets. That doesn't mean they CAN'T be profitable.

[georgeeipi]

Denise, Steve great replies thanks. I am contemplating the Priv of course, but most people around me are into the iOS ecosystem so it's not so simple. However the reason for the post was actually aimed at Blackberry. If they are contemplating shifting to Android, then they will potentially become just another Android phone manufacturer. And if they manufacture phones with keyboards they will be more expensive than most of their competitors and probably have a lower profit margin, and they will be stuck in the Android half of the market. But if they manufacture PKB attachments for Android and iOS phones that gives them access to the whole market...just saying

[TgeekB]

@troy, absolutely love what you have written. Let me suggest that you have put forward a very interesting hypothesis. An alternative hypothesis is that manufacturers have the potential for a larger profit margin with touch� screens. So they have flooded the market with them and used some of their extra profits with clever marketing that has stimulated people to believe they are better off (after all that is what the advertising industry is built on). So we now have 2 hypotheses and these can be tested against each other.

I would have to think that phone manufacturers have done their research. If the majority of people were asking for PKB, they would at least be making one model that includes it. They wouldn't ignore, or try to fool, the majority of customers.

That's my hypothesis.

When do grades come out?

[Ronindan]

I would have to think that phone manufacturers have done their research. If the majority of people were asking for PKB, they would at least be making one model that includes it. They wouldn't ignore, or try to fool, the majority of customers.

That's my hypothesis.

When do grades come out?

Spot on - I remember Samsung stating that they lunched to Note based on their market research. OEM's all the time conduct market research including Apple and if their research shows that there is a market for pkb's - OEMS will make those phones. But so far they don't see that demand.

What you will see are smartphones with dual sims (for countries that have patchy carrier coverage), flip style smartphones (that form factor is still popular in Japan and Korea) and etc....

[TgeekB]

Spot on - I remember Samsung stating that they lunched to Note based on their market research. OEM's all the time conduct market research including Apple and if their research shows that there is a market for pkb's - OEMS will make those phones. But so far they don't see that demand.

What you will see are smartphones with dual sims (for countries that have patchy carrier coverage), flip style smartphones (that form factor is still popular in Japan and Korea) and etc....

Exactly. Same reason why Apple is coming out with a smaller phone. You can bet your next paycheck that they did their research and already know it will be a success.

[bakron1]

I am involved in the auto industry here in the USA where tens of thousands of smartphones are used for both business and personal use and I can't tell you the last time I seen someone using a PKB device.

As I said in one of my earlier post, I have seen a few government employees using older Blackberry legacy devices, but even that is rare these days.

Touchscreen devices are what the consumer and corporate markets are using in 2016 and that's the cold hard truth whether you choose to accept it or not.

[Smokeaire]

I am involved in the auto industry here in the USA where tens of thousands of smartphones are used for both business and personal use and I can't tell you the last time I seen someone using a PKB device.

As I said in one of my earlier post, I have seen a few government employees using older Blackberry legacy devices, but even that is rare these days.

Touchscreen devices are what the consumer and corporate markets are using in 2016 and that's the cold hard truth whether you choose to accept it or not.

The last paragraph isn't exactly a revelation. It brought to my mind a quote from a famous automobile revolutionary: One of Henry Ford's famous quotes about the Model T was, "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants, so long as it is black."

The touch screen phone is a dream assembly-line product, the VKB is a easily duplicated piece of software, costing little to nothing to create copies after copies for each phone.
The consumer wasn't given a equal choice between the same model of phone, one with a PKB vs the same phone with a VKB. So one can't really say if given an equal choice which one consumers would prefer.

"Any customer can have a phone with any type of keyboard that they want, so long as it is a VKB."

[georgeeipi]

So what you are all telling me is:

- that because touch-screen phones are so widespread, the the market research must have been done that proved that.
-people are using touchscreen phones therefore that is what they want
- no acknowledgment that PKBs would impact on the manufacturer's bottom line

Ok, got the picture now.

[idssteve]

The "majority" isn't EVERYone. Only THE market leader (Samsung) can hope to afford to transfix onto "majority" only. Everyone else, Apple included, must stand ready to grab any crumbs the giants neglect.

Niche markets are rarely majority. Samsung ignores those "crumbs" at their peril. BB itself once felt secure in their domination of PKB "majority". Apple grabbed crumbs BB had neglected. Here we are.

By some definitions, Apple should never have even tried.

[Smokeaire]

So what you are all telling me is:

- that because touch-screen phones are so widespread, the the market research must have been done that proved that.
-people are using touchscreen phones therefore that is what they want
- no acknowledgment that PKBs would impact on the manufacturer's bottom line

Ok, got the picture now.

Of course the market research had to be done before the creation of touch screen phones to indicate that the majority will prefer it, hence the development of touch screen phones.

Actually I do love the hybrid approach that BlackBerry took with the Passport, Classic, and now the Priv. It is the best of both worlds.
I switched from my Curves to Google's first Nexus. I liked the phone, did not like the VKB. I've had many Android phones, and being a beta tester for Swiftkey, I constantly missed the PKB. Hated the VKB for many reasons.
I believe that if Samsung and Apple come out with a PKB version of the flagship phones, or even a slightly cheaper versions, the popularity for those types of keyboard would rise.

[MikeX74]

Of course the market research had to be done before the creation of touch screen phones to indicate that the majority will prefer it, hence the development of touch screen phones.

Actually I do love the hybrid approach that BlackBerry took with the Passport, Classic, and now the Priv. It is the best of both worlds.
I switched from my Curves to Google's first Nexus. I liked the phone, did not like the VKB. I've had many Android phones, and being a beta tester for Swiftkey, I constantly missed the PKB. Hated the VKB for many reasons.
I believe that if Samsung and Apple come out with a PKB version of the flagship phones, or even a slightly cheaper versions, the popularity for those types of keyboard would rise.

If Apple and/or Samsung came out with a PKB phone, the popularity would rise because those two companies would actually bother to show people(via advertising, a strange concept to BlackBerry) what it could do and what consumers can do with it.

[Ronindan]

When it comes down to it is just preference. Majority of smartphones users prefer use vkb because of the its flexibility and ease of use. People can make their virtual keyboard bigger or smaller depending on the vkb they are using, it gets out of the way when not it use to allow apps to use the whole screen.

One of the more common comments I hear from my senior colleagues is that they love having a large screen and virtual keyboard since they can see more of the documents or reports that they are reading. Essentially it is easier for their eyes.

[Smokeaire]

When it comes down to it is just preference. Majority of smartphones users prefer use vkb because of the its flexibility and ease of use. People can make their virtual keyboard bigger or smaller depending on the vkb they are using, it gets out of the way when not it use to allow apps to use the whole screen.

One of the more common comments I hear from my senior colleagues is that they love having a large screen and virtual keyboard since they can see more of the documents or reports that they are reading. Essentially it is easier for their eyes.

And I hear from many people who I have come in contact with that they hate typing on VKB but have no other choice. Those who had BlackBerry phones in the past miss the keyboard but for many reasons (usually work, family, or needed apps) had to switch to an Android phone or iphone.

[Ronindan]

And I hear from many people who I have come in contact with that they hate typing on VKB but have no other choice. Those who had BlackBerry phones in the past miss the keyboard but for many reasons (usually work, family, or needed apps) had to switch to an Android phone or iphone.

Then their dilemma is solved then since (I am assuming) they all bought the priv because it has a pkb.