Originally Posted by
Rello Within the last week, I went to a Verizon store to FINALLY just play around with a Z30. I had to actually ask where it was because I couldn't find it smh. Turns out, it was placed next to a bunch of feature phones with no sign around that there was A BlackBerry section. People in here acting like it's just Tmobile. Lol no one is pushing BlackBerry these days...not even Verizon with their exclusive BlackBerry device
Blackberry has suffered from disinterest and, even more frequently, blatant hostility in the US market for years now. NONE of that is a surprise.
So you have to have some perspective here. We are talking about differences that begin from an extremely low level of interest overall.
The fact you can find the devices at all at Verizon actually makes them stand out. That's just the reality of the brand in this region.
As I keep telling people, it's going to get worse before it gets better. The smartphone market right now in developed markets like the USA is ridiculously competitive, NO vendor and I mean
NO vendor except Apple and Samsung are making any money on smartphones, and it takes hundreds of millions of dollars thrown into the market just to have a minimal presence. BlackBerry does NOT have that kind of money to throw out right now, especially since the likelihood of getting any significant return on that investment at this point is virtually nil.
In short, the smartphone market in the USA right now is
out of reach to BlackBerry for all practical purposes, and that's not going to change for AT LEAST a year or two while BlackBerry tries to stabilize the company by building their more promising enterprise software/MDM business, a couple of select international markets (ie Indonesia) and get some consistent revenue flowing.
Until then, I suggest people get used to not seeing much in the way of BlackBerry smartphones at retail for a while. That's just the facts of life at the moment.