[MarsupilamiX]

BBOS itself wasn't really the problem. If you look at it, it's actually more flexiable than iOS in that, while a system with icons that load apps...you can move them around, hide them, have desktop features, multiple icons and notices....just like Android does now. The problem was small phones, with keyboards instead of full touchscreens and no cool apps. They've since fixed those two issues, but introduced a new OS along with it that is less functional than the OS that came before in terms of core efficient features.

Which brings us back to BBOS.
It was totally unsuited for phones with a big touchscreens.
And in the time of the iPhone and Galaxy Series becoming popular, we have seen that BlackBerry was completely incapable to make a real competitor to these devices.
Due to BBOS and its inherent limitations.

I think we should clearly separate the platform (BBOS or BB10) from the programming (core functionality and UI etc).
BBOS was old (at the time BBRY was changing over to BB10 platform), and BBRY at least had to upgrade the hardware in order to survive, which they did not. BTW, if they at least upgraded the 9900 with a hardware acceleration alone, it would have brought the browser to a usable level (I believe). RIM's hardware was always 2 generations behind the competition, and they used to get away with it, and dwelled on it.
If BBRY built the BBOS functionalities and UI (and some) on the BB10 platform, that alone should have been a big saviour for BBRY, I would think.
As I always said, I need a Super Bold (on the BB10 platform would be good), or a hybrid BBOS/BB10 (in terms of programming).

I think what's happening under Chen is rapidly produce "Jakarta"with Foxconn (supposedly a very competitive product) in order to sustain the emerging market (it's a consumers market but big, and BBRY cannot afford to lose it), and return to the enterprise market to take care of their needs with a high end (and probably new) enterprise device. I am sure John Chen is totally aware of all these things we have been discussing here, and will (try to) do the right thing. I heard him saying in one of his interviews that he would address the enterprise market, which has been requesting at least the direction the BBRY was going to. I totally agree with this. We need to know which way BBRY is going, what sort of device they are considering, what their present understanding of the market need is etc. if they gave a reasonable roadmap, I would believe the chunk of enterprise market would sit tight, wait and see (albeit reluctantly).

I didn't ignore your other post, but it was too long for me to respond in a thoughtful way right now.
I will adress it tomorrow.

Anyhow, back to this post:
The hopes of Chen getting it, are pretty big, so I'd say that from all the CEOs until now, he may grasp the reality BlackBerry is in, the best.
How that will look like, is something we will witness next year, if we want to, or not.

Theoretically I agree with BlackBerry needing a bigger enterprise focus with their new platform, but while BlackBerry took their sweet time to make BB10, the competition hasn't slept.
iPhones are now the de facto standard for most business people, especially in small to middle enterprises.
iOS and Android both got enterprise specific apps while BB10 was in the making, that are mission critical for some enterprise customers.
So there is even an app gap to fight in that sector.
The totally locked down device segment, is still firmly in the hands of BBOS, I'll give you that. So in that one, BB10 probably has some good cards, because nobody attained the degree of security a BlackBerry combined with BES can achieve.

Now onto your first point....
If a BBOS UI, with BBOS features but with a BB10 core, would have been a better decision is something I personally disagree with.
The most obvious reason for me, is because I wouldn't have bought that.
I only had one BBOS device, the 9810, and the only reason for keeping it was the device being a slider and it excelling at communications.
With Android and iOS having matured the way they did, I wouldn't have bought another BlackBerry, if it would have been too similar to BBOS.

But this is only my personal opinion and obviously there are people with other preferences.
The problem I really have with the assertion of needing more BBOS in BB10, is that I just don't see the market demanding it. Neither back then when OS6 was still new, nor today.
Consumers have been walking away from BBOS for a long time now, and they have found something in Android, iOS, that suits them way better. The proof as so often, is in the sale numbers.
Even in a time where BBOS was still desirable, most consumers have had no interest in the platform, the moment other competitors entered the smartphone sector.

Of course, there will be users just like you, who want a super Bold, and it's not like I couldn't understand why.
But when an enterprise has the chance to gain new customers, or to focus on the ever decreasing customer base that is happy with your product (about 1% this year, mostly sustained by emerging markets and the enterprise sector), then it's the better decision to try to get the other 99% on board.
BlackBerry already made losses when BBOS7 was introduced, which proves me that the BBOS paradigm wasn't sustainable anyhow.

Posted via CB10

[Omnitech]

Try just hanging up the phone on 10 when your in another app and you can't. You have to gesture out of 10 and back to the phone page to do so.
OS 7, press the hang up button.

Try highlighting text to copy in OS10 and see how long that takes compared to using a track pad in OS7. Esp. getting the bubbles to work.
Sometimes it takes 3 or 4 times as long to edit a page than it does with a track pad.

Have a lot of contacts (I have over 600), good luck trying to find one (in OS10) for a specific job, esp. if you can't remember their name.

Those are good points, I have made all of them myself here many times. However I actually think most of them should be fixable.

In OS 7, I had categories (essentially folders) for my contacts. Contractors that don't have a business name were categorized by trade and could easily be found. Same with suppliers with addresses readily seen for specific geographic locations.
Now OS10, unless I know their name or where the company is located, I can't find them in the phone.... Unless I want to scroll for an hour looking at each contact's details until I find the right one.

OS 10.2.1.x now has contact categories. Though the contacts mechanism in BB10 is fundamentally broken in other ways, unfortunately.

There are very good apps available to the business user in OS 7 that aren't available in 10.. Like Call Blocking.
I get hammered everyday by telemarketers... it's extremely annoying.... And in OS7 I had a couple of great apps that filtered those calls out.

Now that headless apps are finally becoming available after delays on the OS side, the call blocker apps will start to come, although there are still some missing APIs. (BlackBerry should be able to fix that relatively easily.)

[redlightblinking]

Not only is that very true, it put a big grin on my face because of just how true it is and how salient it is here.

What we have here on CB day-in/day-out is a big crowd of people that not only seem to love watching trainwrecks, they appear to relish throwing gasoline on the fire, too.

He was responding to me, and I want more than anyone for BB to succeed, but I'm not delusional about why it isn't. Pointing out obvious problems is apparently viewed here just as it is in management meetings in Waterloo.....with great skepticism.

[GadgetTravel]

Familiarity is the reason, or one reason, why OS7 is outselling the BB10. People are afraid or hesitant to make the jump when they've got a good thing going. Granted, I thought BB10 would outsell it's predecessors, but that's not always the case. A good portion of people use BlackBerry for business and travel and aren't looking for a q10 or z10 which was designed to compete with androids and iphones.

Posted via CB10

I use my phone for business and travel. My iPhone 5. The difference in available travel apps is huge. My Q10 isn't close.

[Infamy79]

Most people overlook the fact that with BES customers, they need replacement phones frequently, but have not upgraded to BES10. They still use BBOS devices and when they die, they are replaced by BBOS devices until they upgrade to BES10.

You are right, I have no idea how this thread has ended up with people discussing app numbers and side loading when that doesn't explain why BB7 is outselling BB10. BB7 doesn't have much of an app-ecosystem either.

I touched on this in my previous post (which no one really commented on) however there is no compelling reason to upgrade to BES10 when Blackberry have abandoned their push email system in favour for ActiveSync which a user can get on any handset in the market. BES10 is just a version of the Blackberry Mobile Fusion management platform. They have abandoned their legacy market with this, in addition to no longer selling BES add ons to their phone plans which were a massive incentive for carriers to push Blackberry in the first place (though they needed to drop the price of this).

The only way I see Blackberry retaining a chance in the enterprise space is to introduce backwards compatibility into BB10 OS for phones so that they can add a legacy BES5 email account along with any other kind of account they want such as ActiveSync, IMAP, Gmail, etc and then update BES5 to recognise BB10 handsets.

They then need to update BES10 to be a true replacement of BES5, not something that has to run side by side with BES5 as requiring additional servers to support two generations of handsets is just a terrible value proposition and is akin to changing your entire mobile fleet over to another solution anyway. Bring back legacy push email into BES10 so that those who want to use the data compression and better international roaming can do so as ActiveSync is a dog when it comes to this and some companies are holding on to their BB7 devices for this reason alone. If they can include an Android runtime for apps then they also need a BB7 runtime to allow companies to migrate internal apps they have developed for BB7 to be able run them on BB10. If they need to rewrite their internal apps then why wouldn't they just rewrite them for iPhone, Android or Windows instead?

They were never going to win the BYOD war with such a lacking app ecosystem, yet BB10 took a massive dump on their core market with their lack of enterprise functionality. Bring the enterprise features into BB10 and add legacy support or its only going to get worse.

As for those saying its price, do they even display BB7 devices in stores or online these days? I look at the AT&T online store and they only list BB10 devices. The only way you can buy BB7 is through a business contract with the carrier which carries older devices. So maybe prices in this portal may be cheaper, but I think its a pretty short sighted view to think that price is the pure driver behind why so many more BB7 devices are selling, there's a lot more to it than that.

[Omnitech]

For me, and that is based on so called "price elasticities and cross-price elasticities", the biggest mistake BlackBerry made was the pricing of their devices.

This is a chicken/egg issue. BlackBerry is not Samsung or Apple, their production levels are vastly lower which means their costs are higher. Neither are they so overflowing with money that they can throw billions at the market like Samsung does to get people to buy products - they actually have to make money on every device they sell.

Yeah sure Playbooks and HP Touchpads sold better when you dropped the price to at or below cost. But that is not a remotely sustainable business model.

It will always be a challenge to compete with the giants in the marketplace on price, and if BlackBerry is smart, they will avoid that fight, because they cannot win. Even if they license BB10 to 3rd-party device makers they have to make money on the OS, and if they charge even one penny for it, they have already been undercut by Android.

[superflux]

I use my phone for business and travel. My iPhone 5. The difference in available travel apps is huge. My Q10 isn't close.

I know that the q10 doesn't match up app wise, and maybe that's the reason that the competition is a little steep, but they were still designed in my opinion to compete. I see your point though.

Posted via CB10

[hoovermac]

Not sure if I would call EAS a "dog". Other vendors have embraced EAS (with one notable exception), and on the other devices we have in our house and at work, it works very well. Implementing EAS was a sensible thing for BlackBerry to do, IMHO. Could they have done that in BBOS? Maybe - but BlackBerry obviously thought that BBOS had run its course. Were they correct? Well, yes and no. The low volume of BlackBerry sales of both platforms suggests that BlackBerry hasn't convinced potential customers of the long term value of the BB10 platform, nor have they convinced the buying public that the older platform was truly near its end of life! And the fact that they didn't have a low cost BB10 device hurt them tremendously. MS and Nokia have released low cost, great performing WP8 handsets that have driven significant market penetration for WP8; also, there is access to a growing list of apps. You need apps for the platform, but lack of sales means app development will crawl along, hence, the chicken and egg scenario will continue to play out unless BlackBerry did something. The low cost device makes a lot of sense to me.

Posted via CB10

[Omnitech]

I should add to my prior comment - I still think they need to launch a more price competitive product for the developing world.

But they have to figure out a way to not compete head to head with their huge competitors which will always be able to under-price them, on a head-to-head basis.

Either they need to come up with something bundled-in with the product, or they have to tout some kind of value-add, or something. They can NOT compete directly on a strict price basis with their top competitors.

[Omnitech]

BBOS once was the market-leader, in a non-mature and non-saturated market.

The moment BBOS had some serious competition, it began to fail miserably.

And it had about 10 years of time, to fail.

QFT.

Only if packaged with Google Play, because installing shady Chinese app stores is a kludge.

There is already a fabulous 3rd-party app available that gives access to Google Play on BB10. As far as I'm concerned, I think it's better than Google's interface to Play, less encumbered by junk, and built by someone that is continuously listening to users and improving it. (No support for paid apps yet but that's in the works)

IMHO, there is NO need to be installing dicey Asian app store apps on BB10, as far as I'm concerned.

[Omnitech]

He was responding to me, and I want more than anyone for BB to succeed, but I'm not delusional about why it isn't. Pointing out obvious problems is apparently viewed here just as it is in management meetings in Waterloo.....with great skepticism.

And if you're referring to ME there, all you have to do is read my posts for a while to see that I have NO qualms criticizing the product or the company or the product if I think they deserve criticism. See my posts here from today for plenty of evidence of that.

[redlightblinking]

And if you're referring to ME there, all you have to do is read my posts for a while to see that I have NO qualms criticizing the product or the company or the product if I think they deserve criticism. See my posts here from today for plenty of evidence of that.

So we agree. Cool.

[MarsupilamiX]

Your first three sentences have no connection to your fourth sentence.

The connection is there, you may want to try to understand what I said better.
The market paradigm, when BBOS was still successful, was a completely different one. The moment BlackBerry faced some competition with BBOS, was the moment BlackBerry's dominant position vanished.
To compare the two OS, without making this important distinction is completely meaningless.
And because the market realities are so incredibly different to back then, a direct comparison as a whole, could very well be useless.

The fall of BlackBerry under BBOS, because they were so dominant, is by far a bigger failure than to launch a new OS that didn't take off for now.
When you once were the number 1 with your product, and then lost pretty much everything while still selling the same product, then this makes for a bigger failure.
At least when we compare BBOS with BB10.

But it DID. BBOS is holding up BETTER against the other phones than BB10. So, if it is surviving more....it is failing less. Basic logic.

See the response above.
I would call that basic logic as well.
BBOS devices are cheaper btw, which helps to move more units, as everyone who is familiar with basic economic principles, would know.
VW also sells more cars than Audi, even though they are part of the same conglomerate. One basic reason for that, is price.

Which features? Icons for mail like on Android? CHECK
Desktops with weather and calendar like on Android? CHECK
Buttons? Like on Both Ios and Android? CHECK
Notification profiles like IOS now has? CHECK.
Run more than 8 things at once? CHECK!

It seems people haven't rejected these features....they are buying them.

We are probably talking past each other, if you call that features of BBOS.
I, in no way see them as unique to the BBOS platform, as even Symbian S60 had them.
If all you want is more Android and iOS in BB10, then I would even agree with you.

I do disagree with your button comment though, as the only button Apple offers, is the home button, and people seem to be content with only that one. iOS 7 also offers gestures to go back, or to open different functions of the device.
More and more Android manufacturers are moving away from dedicated hardware buttons, and employ on-screen buttons.

Complete conflation of two different reasons. The shift to iOS and Android had little to do with a rejection of BBOS features, so much as it had to do with APPS and touch screens. That's it.

The only people still embracing BB are the ones that were already there and want to keep basic features that make BB powerful and efficient, worth keeping while loosing the advantages of the iOS or Andriod. And these include some features now found on iOS and Android. If those are not on BB10....WHY BUY IT? Want to sell more BB10 phones? Bring them up to the minimum feature standards that your core user base already had.

Again, if you want feature parity with the competition, I am all for it.

That BBOS was completely unsuited for touchscreen only devices, was one of the major reasons why consumers rejected it, just like Nokia's modified Symbian for touchscreens.
It wasn't good enough compared to the competition, and this is directly linked to the OS.

You can probably see it the way you do as well, but the preference for touchscreens, just made it obvious how antiquated the BBOS platform was and still is.
Now add hourglassing, a BIS outage, reboots after app installs/deinstalls and an overall inferior experience than on Android or iOS, you'll hopefully understand that not only apps or touchscreens made people move away from BBOS.
Not only touchscreens and apps , but rather the inherent limitations of the platform itself.

Not really that creative. That's kind of like saying the creative way the French could beat the Germans is to give up and speak German. But they could still keep the sign on the border that says "France".

Oh, BlackBerry had even more creativity.
They included an Android runtime.
That's like having french as an official language in France, but only teaching german in school.
Some ex-colonised arabic countries actually had that happen to them.

Anyway, the move to a full Android OS, would be more creative than to go back, or to come as close as they were, to an already failed OS, namely BBOS.

Posted via CB10

[Omnitech]

They then need to update BES10 to be a true replacement of BES5, not something that has to run side by side with BES5 as requiring additional servers to support two generations of handsets is just a terrible value proposition and is akin to changing your entire mobile fleet over to another solution anyway.

I was under the impression that the 10.1 or 10.2 version of BES already integrated legacy and BB10 device support under a single platform and console. Is that incorrect?

Bring back legacy push email into BES10 so that those who want to use the data compression and better international roaming can do so as ActiveSync is a dog when it comes to this and some companies are holding on to their BB7 devices for this reason alone.

Not going to happen for a variety of reasons, and the "legacy push" that MOST of the people crow about here from what I have seen, is LESS push than EAS or IMAP is. (Banging on POP3 servers every 3-15 minutes and then pushing email to handsets is not "push", it is basically glorified polling.)

If they can include an Android runtime for apps then they also need a BB7 runtime to allow companies to migrate internal apps they have developed for BB7 to be able run them on BB10.

Oh GOD no. Just say no to JavaME. Please. We don't need no stinkin "clock of death" or any of its other problems.

[whiteberryy]

All because there cheaper sadly

C002C4374 HD wallpapers

Posted via CB10

[lnichols]

Also people seem to forget that BES 10 wasn't truly enterprise ready at initial release. It didn't have all of the feature hard core enterprise and Government clients needed until May/June 2013. So testing wouldn't have started until then by these clients. I know for a fact that some are just getting ready to rollout. Had BlackBerry had BES10 really ready at BB10 launch, or made it compatible with BES5 you would probably have seen BB10 sales pick up more than they have for business and Corporate customers. Their most security conscience customers will take their time to test a completely new server. They also had to compare it with other solutions that now have the needed security credentials to get into the test and they are losing to some of them. They took too long and it's costing them.

Posted via CB10

[jdnaples]

I just ordered a bold9930 because it is so much easier to use than q10

like the title asks, why is os7 still outselling bb10 by a significant margin?

[MarsupilamiX]

You are right, I have no idea how this thread has ended up with people discussing app numbers and side loading when that doesn't explain why BB7 is outselling BB10. BB7 doesn't have much of an app-ecosystem either.

I touched on this in my previous post (which no one really commented on) however there is no compelling reason to upgrade to BES10 when Blackberry have abandoned their push email system in favour for ActiveSync which a user can get on any handset in the market. BES10 is just a version of the Blackberry Mobile Fusion management platform. They have abandoned their legacy market with this, in addition to no longer selling BES add ons to their phone plans which were a massive incentive for carriers to push Blackberry in the first place (though they needed to drop the price of this).

The only way I see Blackberry retaining a chance in the enterprise space is to introduce backwards compatibility into BB10 OS for phones so that they can add a legacy BES5 email account along with any other kind of account they want such as ActiveSync, IMAP, Gmail, etc and then update BES5 to recognise BB10 handsets.

They then need to update BES10 to be a true replacement of BES5, not something that has to run side by side with BES5 as requiring additional servers to support two generations of handsets is just a terrible value proposition and is akin to changing your entire mobile fleet over to another solution anyway. Bring back legacy push email into BES10 so that those who want to use the data compression and better international roaming can do so as ActiveSync is a dog when it comes to this and some companies are holding on to their BB7 devices for this reason alone. If they can include an Android runtime for apps then they also need a BB7 runtime to allow companies to migrate internal apps they have developed for BB7 to be able run them on BB10. If they need to rewrite their internal apps then why wouldn't they just rewrite them for iPhone, Android or Windows instead?

They were never going to win the BYOD war with such a lacking app ecosystem, yet BB10 took a massive dump on their core market with their lack of enterprise functionality. Bring the enterprise features into BB10 and add legacy support or its only going to get worse.

I do not disagree a lot on the things you said in this quote, apart from the comment about EAS.
EAS is THE standard for enterprises when it comes down to Email.
Costs that are getting higher for enterprises because they would need to support the BlackBerry push option, will be/ is already such a turn-off for enterprises, that they won't consider it.

The associated costs are too high, when every other device works fine with their current infrastructure.
The move to support EAS like every other device does, was probably the one of the most rational decision BlackBerry made, in a growing BYOD environment.
The move to a complete MDM solution that supports every other major OS, was an incredibly important step as well, because BYOD has become so big, that if you aren't selling BlackBerries in the enterprise sector, you should at least make money on the software managing the BYOD trend.

As for those saying its price, do they even display BB7 devices in stores or online these days? I look at the AT&T online store and they only list BB10 devices. The only way you can buy BB7 is through a business contract with the carrier which carries older devices. So maybe prices in this portal may be cheaper, but I think its a pretty short sighted view to think that price is the pure driver behind why so many more BB7 devices are selling, there's a lot more to it than that.

In markets where BBOS still has something like a consumer presence, namely emerging markets, it's different and price combined with a physical keyboard, are pretty much the only selling points.

In "developed" nations, enterprise sales are mostly sustaining BBOS sales.
It's an environment where a lot of PCs still use XP....

And no, that view isn't shortsighted.
What's shortsighted is not to understand that cheap Androids will completely erode BBOS' marketshare in emerging markets in the coming year.


Posted via CB10

[MarsupilamiX]

This is a chicken/egg issue. BlackBerry is not Samsung or Apple, their production levels are vastly lower which means their costs are higher. Neither are they so overflowing with money that they can throw billions at the market like Samsung does to get people to buy products - they actually have to make money on every device they sell.

Yeah sure Playbooks and HP Touchpads sold better when you dropped the price to at or below cost. But that is not a remotely sustainable business model.

It will always be a challenge to compete with the giants in the marketplace on price, and if BlackBerry is smart, they will avoid that fight, because they cannot win. Even if they license BB10 to 3rd-party device makers they have to make money on the OS, and if they charge even one penny for it, they have already been undercut by Android.

Theoretically, I understand that position, but then there is a pretty simple answer to that problem:

If people aren't buying the devices, and BlackBerry makes losses because of unsold inventory, or BlackBerry realises losses because they have to sell the devices below cost, then it just means that BlackBerry as a whole is uncompetitive.
A basic question in such a scenario, for someone going into economics 101, would be if such an enterprise would quit the marketplace sooner or later.
The normal answer to that question is yes, if the status quo doesn't change.

Of course I don't wish for that scenario, but the complicated chicken/egg question, actually has a very simple outcome:
Either BlackBerry sells the devices cheap enough, or they can guarantee that their devices are worth the price they demand, then their situation will get better.
If not, well, then BlackBerry has to leave the handset selling business behind.

I should add to my prior comment - I still think they need to launch a more price competitive product for the developing world.

But they have to figure out a way to not compete head to head with their huge competitors which will always be able to under-price them, on a head-to-head basis.

Either they need to come up with something bundled-in with the product, or they have to tout some kind of value-add, or something. They can NOT compete directly on a strict price basis with their top competitors.

I agree and disagree.
Disagreement, because smartphones are now becoming a commodity, in a saturated market.
This implies smaller prices on the hardware sold, that is translated into smaller prices for the consumer.

From refrigerators to washing machines to cars, from TVs to PCs, and from toasters to water boilers, we can observe that.
The price war will only get more intense, the longer BlackBerry will stay in the game.

Posted via CB10

[redlightblinking]

The market paradigm, when BBOS was still successful, was a completely different one. The moment BlackBerry faced some competition with BBOS, was the moment BlackBerry's dominant position vanished.

Already false. It took more than a moment.

The fall of BlackBerry under BBOS, because they were so dominant, is by far a bigger failure than to launch a new OS that didn't take off for now.
When you once were the number 1 with your product, and then lost pretty much everything while still selling the same product, then this makes for a bigger failure.

But they STILL ARE selling the same product. It says Blackberry on it. It has icons that you touch to run apps. It has a massive app problem. To the average consumer....It's the SAME PRODUCT.

We are probably talking past each other, if you call that features of BBOS.
I, in no way see them as unique to the BBOS platform, as even Symbian S60 had them.
If all you want is more Android and iOS in BB10, then I would even agree with you.

NO you missed the point. They are not unique to BBOS, or Andriod, or iOS....But NONE OF THEM are on BB10. Get the picture?

That BBOS was completely unsuited for touchscreen only devices, was one of the major reasons why consumers rejected it, just like Nokia's modified Symbian for touchscreens.

HOW? I have a 9900. My friend has a Torch. Full touch screen. I touch icons. They open apps. I pinch and zoom. I scroll pages. I touch emails, I touch links in web pages. Works great. How is it unsuited?

Consumers rejected it because either
A: it said Blackberry on it
or
B: it had no apss
or
C: the screen was too small

You can probably see it the way you do as well, but the preference for touchscreens, just made it obvious how antiquated the BBOS platform was and still is.

And yet I use a touch screen everyday just perfectly on my BBOS device. Strange. Must be I have a broken phone. And, it does more touchscreen functions than iOS or BB10 in that I can customize the layout of the screen. I can touch and hold. I can swipe from email back to hub or to next email, or text, or whatever. All on BBOS

Now add hourglassing, a BIS outage, reboots after app installs/deinstalls and an overall inferior experience than on Android or iOS, you'll hopefully understand that not only apps or touchscreens made people move away from BBOS.

Hourglassing is simply a lack of resources. Again, not problem with the functionality and layout of the OS.
BIS outage? ONE OUTAGE? BIS is the single most reliable way to get email. I can't count how many times I hear people say "I haven't been getting email today from (insert various pop or web based or other type of third part email here) on my (insert non BIS phone here). Or that they need to connect to the server to see their mail. Or that they can't send without SMTP server issues.

You have a point about reboots, but that's not really a daily occurrence, not a deal breaker.
Overall inferior experience? That's completely subjective. I have an overall inferior experience on my iOS device compared to the lighting fast way I can do things on my BBOS device.

I will hopefully understand? Talk down much?

Oh, BlackBerry had even more creativity.
They included an Android runtime.

Um, that's not really creative, that's desperate. If Android could suddenly could run iOS apps, are they creative?

That's like having french as an official language in France, but only teaching german in school.
Some ex-colonised arabic countries actually had that happen to them.

Uh, what? That's like have two languages available, but the second is only good if you know the secret way to side load or download or whatever.

Anyway, the move to a full Android OS, would be more creative than to go back, or to come as close as they were, to an already failed OS, namely BBOS.

Once again, I've never said anything about going back to BBOS, but to simply bring BB10 up to the same feature level....like the basics of running more than 8 apps at once. Or a freaking envelope icon. Or notification profiles.

[Infamy79]

I was under the impression that the 10.1 or 10.2 version of BES already integrated legacy and BB10 device support under a single platform and console. Is that incorrect?

From what I have read, even BES 10.2 still needs a BES5 server to properly support BB7 devices. You can manage the entire environment from the BES10 server, but you still need the BES5 for the push email component.

Not going to happen for a variety of reasons, and the "legacy push" that MOST of the people crow about here from what I have seen, is LESS push than EAS or IMAP is. (Banging on POP3 servers every 3-15 minutes and then pushing email to handsets is not "push", it is basically glorified polling.)

Most BES5 installations I worked with worked with Exchange, so were still true push as there was no polling required. EAS works by having the handset poll the server with a request asking if it is there and then the server will return that request either with an update saying there is a new mail to collect or before the timeout to ensure the connection remains live. It requires about 20MB a month per handset to maintain this constant connection, it is not true push like Blackberry which worked with the carriers to implement.

Oh GOD no. Just say no to JavaME. Please. We don't need no stinkin "clock of death" or any of its other problems.

I am simply giving reasons for why the enterprise have not adopted BB10 and why they still purchase BB7 devices given that is the topic of this thread. When so many companies have already moved away from Blackberry, giving those that remain an easy migration path and not have to rewrite their internal apps would help with this transition. If JaveME is gone why not rewrite for another OS instead of BB10 which is a fledgling OS in the market?

[Infamy79]

I do not disagree a lot on the things you said in this quote, apart from the comment about EAS.
EAS is THE standard for enterprises when it comes down to Email.
Costs that are getting higher for enterprises because they would need to support the BlackBerry push option, will be/ is already such a turn-off for enterprises, that they won't consider it.

The associated costs are too high, when every other device works fine with their current infrastructure.
The move to support EAS like every other device does, was probably the one of the most rational decision BlackBerry made, in a growing BYOD environment.
The move to a complete MDM solution that supports every other major OS, was an incredibly important step as well, because BYOD has become so big, that if you aren't selling BlackBerries in the enterprise sector, you should at least make money on the software managing the BYOD trend.

I'm not saying they shouldn't have supported EAS, I'm saying they shouldn't have replaced BES5 push email with it, why not be able to add accounts of both types (and more) to a handset? For companies that retain strict security and only allowed BB7 handsets, opening up EAS simply means they could in turn consider every other handset in the market. If BB10 supported BES5 push email then those companies would never have had to enable EAS and they would still be able to only offer Blackberry devices to their staff.

In markets where BBOS still has something like a consumer presence, namely emerging markets, it's different and price combined with a physical keyboard, are pretty much the only selling points.

In "developed" nations, enterprise sales are mostly sustaining BBOS sales.
It's an environment where a lot of PCs still use XP....

And no, that view isn't shortsighted.
What's shortsighted is not to understand that cheap Androids will completely erode BBOS' marketshare in emerging markets in the coming year.

Well we'd need to see a breakdown of where those BB7 devices are selling to know if its the developing markets that are moving two thirds to three quarters of the total handsets that Blackberry sold in the last quarter. If the developing markets are the only places that Blackberry are selling right now then I think the outlook is even worse for BB as it means the developed markets are essentially lost forever. You only need to look at the success of the Nokia 520 range so see how price can be such a factor, however I think this is still a very consumer focussed view. Enterprise will buy what works with their systems, especially if they have policies around which devices can be used.

[Bishkin]

Chen ....

the solution is now very very obvious, forget BB10, Blackberry must run on Android .... oh, did you say existing customers, well we'll dual boot it then for the transition ....

[Omnitech]

Um, that's not really creative, that's desperate. If Android could suddenly could run iOS apps, are they creative?

I think it was a great response to a serious market problem called "network effects". When the entrenched players are buoyed by massive ecosystem barriers to entry of new competitors, it is VERY difficult for a new competitor to break through this.

There is a reason why you don't have 3 different companies competing to provide electricity wiring to your home. This is an example of "network effects". (To more of an extreme, some people call such businesses "natural monopolies")

Then we have internet access. How many companies provide cables into your house that you can use to obtain broadband internet access with? In the USA, we have 2: the "telephone company", and the "cable company". Most municipalities grant an exclusive monopoly on cable service within their jurisdiction, so that makes the provision of land-cable-based internet an essential "duopoly". (There are wireless services, and with the exception of cellular carriers - another version of the "telephone company" and often the same entity - they are few and far between and not very practical)

Tell us which smartphone platform other than BlackBerry that you know of that built an app catalog of 150,000 apps within the span of 12 months.

(Well you can't - because the only one that exists is BlackBerry)

And even that 150,000 is not enough, in the current smartphone market, so they provided something that NO other smartphone maker has EVER done: access to 2 major smartphone OS ecosystems in the SAME device.

I think you might underestimate just how difficult it is to break into the smartphone market today with a completely new platform.





[Jack_Yugis]

Alot of people still like OS 7.