Originally Posted by
MarsupilamiX From the data we have since the introduction of iOS and Android, my interpretation is that most people don't care about BlackBerry's USPs with BBOS.
BIS certainly is somewhere close to completely irrelevant today.
I absolutely agree with this, although I am not quite sure about the BIS question.
Originally Posted by
MarsupilamiX Trackpads? Yeah....
Keyboards (even though I'd buy a good slider or Bold with a big enough screen instantly) have completely lost their appeal for most smartphone owners.
I'll get to this question later in association with with your next point below.
Originally Posted by
MarsupilamiX It may be an incomplete list of features, but the general tendency from the average consumer, is that he doesn't care one bit about the USPs a legacy BlackBerry has.
There is one big context missing in our discussion, which is "consumer vs enterprise", I think.
While I started writing this post, I just happened to encounter someone’s post, which tells it all.
Originally Posted by
donmateo 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.
When BBRY was working hard on BB10, they were probably focusing (and too much) on the consumers market, which was certainly big, and BBRY had this obsessive idea that they lost this important market to Apple/Android, and tried to capture it with vengeance. But while they are doing this, they left out the roots and their most important market, which was the enterprise market.
You said in your previous post, 99% of people did not care about the BBOS, and this is true if you were only talking about the consumers market.
As of today, BBRY lost the consumers market, and that’s why they are now talking about going back to the roots etc. I only hope it’s not too late for them
From the consumers' viewpoint, the BB, be it the BBOS or BB10, it's totally irrelevant. They wrote the BB off a long time ago. To them, and for a long time, it's been seen as a totally obsolete device. The very existence of the physical keyboard alone must have given them an impression that it was a grandpa/grandma's device, although there are a huge number of people in the world who still use the BB as a texting device, i.e., young people or in emerging markets.
Now, looking at the enterprise market, where RIM/BBRY has been traditionally very strong. It was not too long ago when every business people (company executives/employees etc.), lawyer, accountant, consultant and store owner appeared to have a BB .
Reasons are;
1. RIM offered most efficient push email system that businesses embraced.They needed efficient communication device.
2. Business people tend to use keyboard more than consumers, and care less about the entertainment/contents aspect of the phone, hence content with sacrificed screen real estate.
3. Those “little moments of delight” , although subtle, were important to business people, who are always busy and on the go.
4. Of course the BES aspect was critical (to lesser extent the BIS too).
5. Priorities of business are very different from the consumers'.
So, the candy bar style QWERTY phone became the de facto standard for the enterprise market.
Re trackpad and keyboard, they are important in typing away many emails/texts. I personally do not need a keyboard if only for a typing purpose, but it gives an important function of shortcuts (almost macro functions), particularly with the ability to manipulate the device in one hand, which is a huge advantage for people on the go.
I do not have to describe all these to you as obviously an experienced person (you rooted your Android :-).
So, the question is how large the enterprise market is. I would think it is very large for BBRY. When the enterprise market found that BB10 was no BB, and particularly when BYOD was becoming popular, they were either holding out with legacy devices that still largely satisfy their purposes, or migrate in droves to other platforms, most notably, the iPhone, as Apple is making it more useful for the enterprise use.
Oh, shoot, I again created a spaghetti long post!