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How will you be able to make a product successful - when you have no, or at least a little clue what is about?
Posted via CB1010-01-16 03:29 AMLike 0 -
🔥 📶10-01-16 03:59 AMLike 0 -
Posted via CB10Jack Chin likes this.10-01-16 07:43 AMLike 1 - Hi friends!
As the title says, I just saw the BNN interview - John Chen and the legacy of BlackBerry devices.
No wonder that the hand set business went that way.
John Chen just seems that he has no clue about BlackBerry - I mean about their devices.
He likes the 9900, the Curve and the Passport.
It seems that that's all he knows about the "BlackBerry experience".
Sometimes this works, but when a company is trying to solve a marketplace/product related problem in its core business it almost never works. If you look at Apple they tried this during the dark years...bringing in a Pepsi executive in John Sculley who failed dismally. They brought a couple of other guys who failed before bringing back Jobs and the rest is history.
Of note: while they struggled they made a point of never abandoning the core of the faithful userbase.
Industry experience matters. Chen is Blackberry's Sculley.
https://blog.insideview.com/2011/08/...of-apple-ceos/
Posted via CB10Jack Chin likes this.10-01-16 07:44 AMLike 1 - But no one is trying to make BB10 successful. Chen was hired in 2013 after the BlackBerry board determined that BB10 had failed. His mandate was to pivot the company to software, not save BB10.10-01-16 08:35 AMLike 2
- That is, boards will get someone like Chen who is a good numbers guy to fill the CEO slot because he had success in that role at another company in a completely different industry.
Sometimes this works, but when a company is trying to solve a marketplace/product related problem in its core business it almost never works.
Industry experience matters. Chen is Blackberry's Sculley.
I disagree that Chen is from a different industry. He's from the enterprise software industry. That is the industry that BB has been trying to get to. Chen has gotten them there, as he had planned all along. He got BB out of the commodity low margin, high volume business in which BB could no longer compete. Again, this is the transition which he had planned and shared with investors all along.
I wonder how people here define the word "transition"? If you are transitioning from one career to another, would you lament the loss of your old career?10-01-16 10:06 AMLike 4 - Delusional much? BlackBerry is going to fold up now. Serious MDM clients would now not trust BlackBerry to provide tea to them. A CEO who has promised the world and couldn't live up to anything. He can try spinning the news however he wants. BlackBerry is DONE.
Posted via CB10
10-01-16 11:24 AMLike 0 -
- Well, I realize that everyone is backseat driving with the benefit of hindsight here, which is unfair to Chen and BlackBerry's other executives in some ways. However, some of you folks follow this stuff a lot more closely than I do, so I have a question:
Given that BlackBerry is exiting the handset design and production business, do you think it was an error to keep producing handsets after Chen came aboard? A lot of resources were sunk into a money-losing proposition that the company was unable to turn around. I know that no one is perfect, but it seems that continuing the handset division rather than shuttering it immediately shows that the leadership failed to read the situation well, but I recognize that there may be factors involved that made it necessary.
So would the company have been better off to have shut down the handset side of the business and switched their focus to software immediately, or did they need the transition time for some credible reason?10-01-16 12:07 PMLike 0 -
I believe Passport and Classic were aimed at giving BB10 a last shot?
Z30STA100-2/10.3.2.287610-01-16 12:21 PMLike 0 - Some of those were designed before John took the helm. The leap was basically a Z3 tweaked just a bit. There was no bb10 phone that Chen saw completely developed under his leadership IMO10-01-16 12:29 PMLike 0
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The classic and the Z3 were his babies
That's what I know at least
Z30STA100-2/10.3.2.287610-01-16 12:42 PMLike 0 -
Posted via CB1010-01-16 01:13 PMLike 0 -
- He had to drag things out long enough to build up the software. No one at BlackBerry had any illusions that those devices would save the company.10-01-16 04:04 PMLike 0
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Posted via CB1010-01-16 05:14 PMLike 0 -
- Well, I realize that everyone is backseat driving with the benefit of hindsight here, which is unfair to Chen and BlackBerry's other executives in some ways. However, some of you folks follow this stuff a lot more closely than I do, so I have a question:
Given that BlackBerry is exiting the handset design and production business, do you think it was an error to keep producing handsets after Chen came aboard? A lot of resources were sunk into a money-losing proposition that the company was unable to turn around. I know that no one is perfect, but it seems that continuing the handset division rather than shuttering it immediately shows that the leadership failed to read the situation well, but I recognize that there may be factors involved that made it necessary.
So would the company have been better off to have shut down the handset side of the business and switched their focus to software immediately, or did they need the transition time for some credible reason?
The problem with doing that in this case, though, was that BB had very little else to sell in 2013 or 2014, and so, while they'd have cut away a money-losing business, they'd also have had to almost immediately cut 2/3-3/4 of their staff and cut a ton of other expenses - which would have undermined BB's ability to grow any of those replacement products. It could well have killed BB as a company, forcing them to sell off their few remaining assets and disappearing.
To use a simplified analogy, it's like taking a job that won't pay your bills in order to enter a new career - a career that you're likely to make much better money with in the long run. When you first take that job, you might have to sell your nice house and nice car, move into an apartment, and live off credit, going deeper in debt every month, but doing so knowing that promotions are coming and that your financial stress will ease with time. Chen needed the time to downsize and outsource things in a structured and organized way, to minimize the shock to everyone: employees, management, investors, and customers. He also needed customers to keep buying non-phone products that would still be around once phones were discontinued. And he needed some of those employees to work on new, software-based products that would transition BB away from being so reliant on hardware. All that took time, and it made strategic sense to continue the money-losing hardware business (that was losing less and less money as BB was less and less involved in it) until he could get his other pieces in place.10-01-16 06:01 PMLike 4 - Ahh but THAT was the key to make their offerings in software a success. The niche market he was catering for is going to run... run FAR AWAY. He himself has said they the key to secure MDM end to end Solutions is hardware. Do you think that these licensees are going to produce a product of that level of security?? Come on!!10-01-16 06:06 PMLike 0
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1. Chen said he took on the job because he favored BlackBerry devices for his own use. He felt they were iconic.
2. He needed to keep revenues up until software revenues could take over.
Passport was already underway under Heins. Z3 was a contractual obligation to a Foxconn deal that Heins made. Classic was Chen's attempt to revive the Bold that he favored. Leap was a minor update to the Leap and didn't take much resources to produce.10-01-16 06:22 PMLike 0 - BB is actually in a strong position with MDM software right now - largely because of the GOOD acquisition. But I don't think Chen in counting on that particular business to sustain BB indefinitely. Just as with BB Radar, I think you're going to see a number of new products over the second half of the decade that will move BB further away from consumer products and focus it on B2B and B2E solutions. BB has never dealt well with individual consumers - and never wanted to - and now they'll be going back to dealing with (mostly big) businesses and leaving the hassles of the fickle consumer business behind them.
Many are now considering BlackBerry DEAD, not just their handset business and Good, Bad or Indifferent Acquisitions isn't saving them.
They will be "going back " to find that no one wants what they have to offer. Trust, credibility, stability is important in business, things that BlackBerry has shown incapable of providing.
One does not invest Millions in their Hardware and Software Security Solutions to have their provider go
Belly up in this manner.
You are very optimistic about a turn around in the latter half of the decade, they will NOT survive that long. You don't get to selectively bash BlackBerry. BlackBerry has only demonstrated within the last few years that they commit to NOTHING.
The best that you can hope for now is that someone Acquires what's left in terms of Patents and does something positive with it, pending Canadian Government approval.
Posted via CB10Last edited by crackbrry fan; 10-01-16 at 08:59 PM.
10-01-16 06:54 PMLike 0 -
BlackBerry's EMM solution has only improved over time, and has been significantly enhanced with Good Dynamics. They are rated the top in every single security category.
Plus BlackBerry is currently on a better financial footing than many other players in the EMM world.Last edited by conite; 10-01-16 at 07:36 PM.
10-01-16 07:15 PMLike 0
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Just saw the BNN interview
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