[uc_ray]

9 out of 10 people that have seen me on my BlackBerry always ask me "BlackBerry still makes phones?". Anyone go through the same experiences of show and tell after that question is asked?

Posted via CB10

[Lusitano17]

Too true...ever since I added a mobile payment app to my PP I hear it weekly. Usually goes ..."Wow, what kind of phone is that? never seen one like that before"...a Blackberry ? Really?

Sadly this situation is only bound to get worse.

[donnation]

Nothing new here, this has been going on for a few years now. No one to blame but BB for it either.

[bakron1]

Nothing new here, this has been going on for a few years now. No one to blame but BB for it either.

I agree 100% with you on this one, Blackberry abandoned their user base here in the USA and Apple and the Android makers where poised and more then happy to welcome them into their platforms. Folks are quick to forget that Blackberry once had over 50% of the market share here with a stock price of 125.00 a share and could have still been a major player if they would have delivered what the consumer asked for, period. The original founders are millionaires several times over and left the company is disarray with no direction or vision for the future, sad.

[MikeX74]

"The public" might know that BB sells phones(or that they exist) if the company had made advertising more of a priority. Then again, when they did advertise, they were ineffective. Sadly, most of BB's wounds are self-inflicted.

[Troy Tiscareno]

BB didn't waste money on advertising because that would only prompt questions like: "Does it have SnapChat?" "It works with NetFlix, right?" "Will it work with my AndroidWear watch?"

The truth is that people aren't as clueless as some here would like to believe - they just have different priorities. Most people, even if they don't use SnapChat or don't own a smartwatch, might need an app tomorrow or buy a new gadget that launches next month, and they know that if they buy an iPhone or Android phone that they'll be fine. They also know that if they buy something else, there's a very good chance that things won't work, and most of them aren't willing to trade that for the Hub or gesture navigation.

You simply don't spend advertising dollars to drive customers into stores to buy your product if they aren't actually likely to buy your product. Most phone salespeople get penalized if their customers return their phones for exchange, so they are going to question anyone who asks for a non-mainstream phone, to make sure they really want it, and most customers who didn't realize that BB10 phones don't have great app access are going to learn that fact - and most would buy something else instead. That's why there would have been little point in spending more money for advertising. It might have sold more devices (i.e., it might have let BB "find" more people who just need phone and email access), but not enough to off-set the cost of the advertising, and not enough to get overall sales volumes high enough to make phones profitable (remember: they're already well into the red, losing around $100 on each phone sold).

[cribble2k]

The people I know have better things to talk about than their phones.

Posted via the CrackBerry App for Android

[Ronindan]

People in general don't care that much about phones. More likely annoyed at people who keeps bringing it up to their attention.

And even if people were clueless about blackberry. Do they actually buy a bb phone when informed other wise..... nope.

[AlfredFettucine]

To be fair to the clueless public...I believe nowadays, even blackberry is asking itself if it still makes phones???
GO CHEN GO!!!
Lets' end this!!!

[pdizzle27]

BB didn't waste money on advertising because that would only prompt questions like: "Does it have SnapChat?" "It works with NetFlix, right?" "Will it work with my AndroidWear watch?"

The truth is that people aren't as clueless as some here would like to believe - they just have different priorities. Most people, even if they don't use SnapChat or don't own a smartwatch, might need an app tomorrow or buy a new gadget that launches next month, and they know that if they buy an iPhone or Android phone that they'll be fine. They also know that if they buy something else, there's a very good chance that things won't work, and most of them aren't willing to trade that for the Hub or gesture navigation.

You simply don't spend advertising dollars to drive customers into stores to buy your product if they aren't actually likely to buy your product. Most phone salespeople get penalized if their customers return their phones for exchange, so they are going to question anyone who asks for a non-mainstream phone, to make sure they really want it, and most customers who didn't realize that BB10 phones don't have great app access are going to learn that fact - and most would buy something else instead. That's why there would have been little point in spending more money for advertising. It might have sold more devices (i.e., it might have let BB "find" more people who just need phone and email access), but not enough to off-set the cost of the advertising, and not enough to get overall sales volumes high enough to make phones profitable (remember: they're already well into the red, losing around $100 on each phone sold).

Good points but it's kind of chicken before the egg. The lack of apps was due to developers waiting to see if BlackBerry was going to go out if business. BlackBerry should have focused on advertising, sales, better US roll outs, and quick fixes to early z10 flaws.

[Ronindan]

the problem with this notion is that bb marketing has limited features or hooks to market with. lets use the playbook for example: it was lunched missing email. and this is a bb product, who is known for email. kinda hard to create an ad campaign for a tablet that does not have email from a company known for email. And going other tablets that have email capabilities baked in

[tufcustomer]

BB didn't waste money on advertising because that would only prompt questions like: "Does it have SnapChat?" "It works with NetFlix, right?" "Will it work with my AndroidWear watch?"

The truth is that people aren't as clueless as some here would like to believe - they just have different priorities. Most people, even if they don't use SnapChat or don't own a smartwatch, might need an app tomorrow or buy a new gadget that launches next month, and they know that if they buy an iPhone or Android phone that they'll be fine. They also know that if they buy something else, there's a very good chance that things won't work, and most of them aren't willing to trade that for the Hub or gesture navigation.

.

This, 1000x this.

Posted via CB10

[Witmen]

9 out of 10 people that have seen me on my BlackBerry always ask me "BlackBerry still makes phones?". Anyone go through the same experiences of show and tell after that question is asked?

Posted via CB10

So how many of those people who were blessed with the eye opening experience of seeing your Passport has rushed out to buy one?

Getting consumers to know and care about BB10 was only one part of the battle. Getting those same consumers who are used to iOS and Android to willfully make a huge downgrade when it comes to app selection is a completely different and far more difficult task.

BlackBerry spending huge amounts of money on marketing BB10 would have only increased the total amount of money that they wasted on BB10.

[crackberry_geek]

Good points but it's kind of chicken before the egg. The lack of apps was due to developers waiting to see if BlackBerry was going to go out if business. BlackBerry should have focused on advertising, sales, better US roll outs, and quick fixes to early z10 flaws.

Exactly!!

[crackberry_geek]

So how many of those people who were blessed with the eye opening experience of seeing your Passport has rushed out to buy one?

Getting consumers to know and care about BB10 was only one part of the battle. Getting those same consumers who are used to iOS and Android to willfully make a huge downgrade when it comes to app selection is a completely different and far more difficult task.

BlackBerry spending huge amounts of money on marketing BB10 would have only increased the total amount of money that they wasted on BB10.

Wrong.

I've had multitudes of people interested enough to buy... but they're not going to invest in a platform with a dead future... especially one that charges premium prices.

And when BlackBerry willingly refuses to try and change the perception that they still build phones... the fault lies entirely with BlackBerry.

[Witmen]

Wrong.

I've had multitudes of people interested enough to buy... but they're not going to invest in a platform with a dead future... especially one that charges premium prices.

And when BlackBerry willingly refuses to try and change the perception that they still build phones... the fault lies entirely with BlackBerry.

How many more billions of dollars should BlackBerry have wasted on BB10? Have you seen how much Apple, Samsung, LG and others spend on advertising? So how much more money should they have thrown at a third smartphone option that almost no one on this planet asked for?

BlackBerry lost money on every single BB10 device they sold. So how much more money should they have spent on advertising?

Should BlackBerry just have went bankrupt trying to turn their DOA smartphone OS into a success? BlackBerry isn't Microsoft, they can't afford to continue throwing good money away on a failed product. If Microsoft, with all of its money, can't make a successful third place smartphone OS, who in their right mind thinks BlackBerry can?

BlackBerry 10 is the single largest commercial failure EVER in the history of the smartphone industry. BlackBerry lost several billions of dollars as a result of it. How much more should they have gambled on it?

Eventually, ya have to know when to cut your losses and move on!

[Bbnivende]

9 out of 10 people that have seen me on my BlackBerry always ask me "BlackBerry still makes phones?". Anyone go through the same experiences of show and tell after that question is asked?

Posted via CB10

No one has ever asked me. Must be you they want to chat with.

[ruben1975]

Yup, so how will people that BlackBerry has android? It's not bb10 is the brand 'BlackBerry ' that is the problem...

Posted via CB10

[eshropshire]

Exactly!!

BB should have delivered BB10 in 2010, or 2011 at the outside and it might of made a difference. 2013 was way too late. Maybe if BB10 1.x had been rock solid it might have established a niche, but buggy and late are a bad combination.

As far as marketing being a cure all look at MS, they have spent billions on Windows mobile and their market share keeps going down.

[TgeekB]

Title should be "BlackBerry was clueless about the public".

[darkehawke]

Title should be "BlackBerry was clueless about the public".

This wins the thread

[Troy Tiscareno]

Good points but it's kind of chicken before the egg. The lack of apps was due to developers waiting to see if BlackBerry was going to go out if business. BlackBerry should have focused on advertising, sales, better US roll outs, and quick fixes to early z10 flaws.

BB had pushed back the BB10 launch by a year already, and by the beginning of 2013 when they did launch, they were still a year away from having a competitive product - most people would correctly argue that BB10 wasn't really a complete product until 10.2.1. At launch, BB10 was an incomplete, buggy mess with a few fatal bugs (like the one that caused phones to spontaneously reboot), and no amount of marketing would have fixed that.

In fact, nothing BB did in 2013 could have fixed the fact that they were a minimum of 3 years late (and I would argue 4) launching their next-gen OS. If they had launched 10.0 in early 2010, which was still during the time of significant growth in the smartphone market in general and before iOS and Android had such a massive lead in the app and third-party-hardware-support areas that no one else could compete, then they might have had a chance.

But launching in 2013, they were launching against platforms that had 5-6 years of maturity and refinement behind them already, and those OSs had elevated people's expectations of what a phone should be able to do - and BB's phones simply weren't in the ballpark - and still aren't today if you limit yourself to the out-of-the-box experience (no side-loading, patching, or version-hunting of apps) - which is what most users do.

That this would happen was hardly a secret - people were warning BB of this since 2010, including industry analysts in the media, who were recommending that BB adopt Android as early as 2009, because the writing was on the wall even that far back - but Mike had convinced himself that RIM could compete against Apple and Google and should build an all-new BB platform to do so. He obviously believed, against common sense, that developers would come, and there were tons of people here on CB who believed it too.

The problem is that developers are mostly a product of the free market, and in the free market, supporting the BB10 platform didn't make financial sense (it's the same reason that WinPhone isn't supported, even by companies who live and die with Windows on the desktop). These market forces didn't spring up out of nowhere in 2013 when BB10 was launched; they've been around forever. But Mike, and then Thorston (Mike's hand-picked successor), lived in Waterloo, which was BB's home turf, and they'd staffed the company with "yes men" who learned never to disagree with Mike's opinion. This allowed Mike and Heins to live in a pro-BB fantasy land where everyone the world over wanted BB products, and believed they were swell, just like in Waterloo. The reality outside of the BB echo chamber was actually very different, though, and we've seen the results of that over the last 3 years.

The simple truth is that market forces work against having very many operating systems, because that causes far too much duplication of work for far too many people, which reduces market sizes and profit potential (and profit potential is what motivates companies to make things that you like). There are several billion desktop/laptop computers in use world-wide, yet there are really only 3 OSs - a mainstream OS used by the majority (Windows), a high-end alternative (OSX), and a niche market of mostly free Linux variants, which only survives because a lot of it is open-source and free. The same is going to be true with mobile devices - a mainstream OS used by the majority (Android), a high-end alternative (iOS), and perhaps a niche OS that mostly survives because the company is willing to constantly pour in profits from other profitable divisions (Windows). That doesn't leave any room for BB10. There is no possibility of success at 4th place as an OS - heck, there really isn't any success at 3rd Place either. If you can't be #1 or #2, or free, then you aren't really smart to get into the OS business in the first place.

[Zeratul57]

I still believe the OS could live somewhere else if it had to. WEbOS is in Tvs. Where else can these OS go with IOT. ummm. Where is QNX already in machines everywhere? BB has the only systems to run things reliably. Droid and ios suck at that.

[schumi_xtreme01]

I guess admin should take a quick look on this maybe there's another thread with the same topic they can close this one if ever

Posted via CB10

[uc_ray]

Nah, it will stay open. C ya

Posted via CB10