1. anon(9710735)'s Avatar
    Do you think BlackBerry would've been better off releasing BBOS 8 and a true successor to the Bold 9900 series phone? Seeing how today there is a huge gap between BBOS and BB10 and this fragmentation in my opinion is bad for a mobile phone business. Some people hold on to the legacy OS and devices that are no longer fully supported and some moved on to the new OS and devices but sadly their destiny is doomed. What can we BerryHeads do except for preparing to fully migrate to another OS and mobile phone brand and say farewell to Titanic?

    Posted via CB10
    03-03-16 09:44 AM
  2. Rustybronco's Avatar
    Not at all. Most people prefer a full touch device.
    03-03-16 09:46 AM
  3. thurask's Avatar
    No, for the same reason the world's tallest building is not made from Jenga blocks.
    03-03-16 09:53 AM
  4. PantherBlitz's Avatar
    Hmmm.. a device with even fewer apps than BB10?
    JeepBB and Elephant_Canyon like this.
    03-03-16 09:56 AM
  5. early2bed's Avatar
    Actually, if you look at the destruction of shareholder value that has occurred over the past 7-8 years, it would have been much better for the company to incrementally improve BBOS and stay with the dwindling core handset business. Instead of investing billions in BB10 and trying to sell those handsets, invest in the MDM business. What you would end up with is a highly profitable niche hardware business and a growing software business. You would still eventually be getting out of hardware or in to Android.
    anon(9710735) and pdizzle27 like this.
    03-03-16 10:02 AM
  6. DrBoomBotz's Avatar
    03-03-16 12:01 PM
  7. early2bed's Avatar
    Interesting. I guess BlackBerry, in this case, paid off their technical debt and incurred a financial loss. Now they have a modern OS with little or no technical debt but no customers.

    The transition to Android could have happened much earlier while BBOS was winding down. By now, BBOS would be done, the Android transition would be complete, and the shareholders wouldn't have lost so much money.
    03-03-16 01:24 PM
  8. bobshine's Avatar
    Do you think BlackBerry would've been better off releasing BBOS 8 and a true successor to the Bold 9900 series phone? Seeing how today there is a huge gap between BBOS and BB10 and this fragmentation in my opinion is bad for a mobile phone business. Some people hold on to the legacy OS and devices that are no longer fully supported and some moved on to the new OS and devices but sadly their destiny is doomed. What can we BerryHeads do except for preparing to fully migrate to another OS and mobile phone brand and say farewell to Titanic?

    Posted via CB10
    Nope. BBOS had lived out its useful life. It was impossible to code and to improve on it at a reasonable cost.

    It's like asking if it's better to upgrade the typewritter instead of using modern computers

    Posted via CB10
    03-03-16 01:44 PM
  9. TgeekB's Avatar
    No matter how many ways you ask the question, the answer is still No.
    03-03-16 02:07 PM
  10. prplhze2000's Avatar
    Nope. It was java based and falling further behind

    Posted via CB10
    03-03-16 02:51 PM
  11. StoicEngineer's Avatar
    No.

    How is it that people accept technical obsolescence from Apple and Google but not from BlackBerry? Software releases from each ensure that their older devices slip into irrelevance.

    (Perhaps, I am paying more attention to BlackBerry comments...)

    Posted via CB10
    03-03-16 03:23 PM
  12. Chuck Finley69's Avatar
    Nope. They were right to dump BBOS, they just should have dumped it sooner by jumping to Android like all the other manufacturers did. They would have kept a better relationship with the carriers and had better spent their billions on hardening Android sooner while finding ways to monetize their software consumer solutions (everything they're doing now, just 6-7 years ago).

    Posted via CB10
    03-03-16 03:34 PM
  13. GEO1ER's Avatar
    Is this question even for real? No.

    Posted via CB10
    rthonpm likes this.
    03-03-16 03:44 PM
  14. DrBoomBotz's Avatar
    I don't think I have ever seen this kind of consensus.
    Well done OP!
    03-03-16 03:47 PM
  15. early2bed's Avatar
    It's like asking if it's better to upgrade the typewritter instead of using modern computers
    Actually, it's like a typewriter company seeing that PCs are taking over word processing so they spend 3 billion dollars developing their own proprietary PC that doesn't catch on so they end up becoming a 3nd rate PC manufacturer.

    The shareholders would have been better off if the company decided that they couldn't compete with the PC, start making some other keyboard appliances, continue making typewriters for developing markets, and either returning a bunch of cash to shareholders or putting it towards purchasing and growing a more viable business.
    DrBoomBotz and StoicEngineer like this.
    03-03-16 04:13 PM
  16. idssteve's Avatar
    BBOS needed replacing. Killing it before its replacement was ready was NOT replacing it. Just killing it.

    Sort of like if Ford had decided the Model T needed replacing and stopped T production in 1927 but, mimicking BB, didn't introduce its replacement Model A until 1930! Pulling BB's lunacy like that, would Ford even be heard of today?

    It's all water under the bridge now. I'm really not sure what you'd do to 7.1 to make an 8. ?? BUT, I'll always believe BB10 could have been more mature from birth, while saving precious time, had BBOS dev experience been included in BB10 development. Given their relatively pitiful resources, that's the ONLY way I see they EVER had a chance to survive the overwhelming software resources Apple & Google brought to market. IMO.
    03-03-16 04:19 PM
  17. Couver81's Avatar
    There was nowhere to take BBOS though. It was maxed out with 7.1. Ideally what they should have done was try and bring over the apps on BBOS to BB10. They had to leave a lot behind in the transition and that hurt adoption.

    I shouldn't be too critical there though because I believe they did try to do that but BBOS and BB10 were so different it proved too difficult.
    anon(9710735) likes this.
    03-03-16 05:17 PM
  18. StoicEngineer's Avatar
    There was nowhere to take BBOS though. It was maxed out with 7.1. Ideally what they should have done was try and bring over the apps on BBOS to BB10. They had to leave a lot behind in the transition and that hurt adoption.
    Agreed. But, everything is clear in hindsight. Sigh, if only developers' support - in-house and out - had been seen to be the key.

    BlackBerry had many great ideas that never reached fruition for the consumer side of the business. Once the fall began, the confusion (in-fighting?) absorbed whatever energy was available.
    03-03-16 06:04 PM
  19. TGR1's Avatar
    Agreed. But, everything is clear in hindsight. Sigh, if only developers' support - in-house and out - had been seen to be the key.
    BBRY did recognize they needed developers. For a long time they tried to drum up the interest, from both small and big developers. But it never took off.
    03-03-16 06:15 PM
  20. Troy Tiscareno's Avatar
    BBRY did recognize they needed developers. For a long time they tried to drum up the interest, from both small and big developers. But it never took off.
    Agreed. BB made significant efforts to bring over developers, big and small. They understood how important this was. The problem was that this was all happening in 2011-12, a good while before the launch of BB10, but after it was already clear to most of the market that iOS and Android were going to be the OSX and Windows of the mobile industry, leaving nothing but scraps for everyone else to fight over.

    Hell, back in 2010, when BB bought QNX, many analysts and tech writers were "wondering out loud" if BB had really thought it through, and were quite surprised that they didn't see that the ecosystem wars were essentially over, with iOS and Android as winners, and that BB really had no other viable choice than to go Android. I remember reading that BB had bought QNX and were planning to build their own independent platform, and thinking then that it was corporate suicide, because of the incredible importance of the ecosystem that, even then, in 2010, was probably too late to compete against.

    Had BB10 launched in 2009, or maybe even 2010, it might have been able to build enough ecosystem to be competitive - though it's still questionable whether BB had enough assets and talent to build an entire platform - which has WAY more pieces than most people realize, that all need to work right and evolve quickly. But plenty of people could figure out that starting to build a new platform in 2010 was a losing proposition, and that is why so many developers decided, as early as 2011, 2 years prior to BB10's eventual launch, that they weren't going to bother supporting the platform.

    No one is arguing that BB10 isn't great, or that BB didn't do a good job building a modern OS. That was never the issue. The issue was that they had a short window of time to build a new platform and get it out on the market before both users and developers had invested to much in a competing platform, and BB simply squandered that opportunity by standing on the sidelines as iOS and Android drained the userbase, developer base, and profits from BB. BB simply didn't even start to act until after the window had already closed.

    It's kind of like a car race - it doesn't matter how great your car handles, how smooth and powerfully your engine runs, or how fast your lap times are, if you can't start the race when the green flag drops. Showing up to run the race after the checkered flag has been waved and the trophies handed out is just too late, even if you have the best driver and the best car.
    03-03-16 06:47 PM
  21. Dave Bourque's Avatar
    Actually, if you look at the destruction of shareholder value that has occurred over the past 7-8 years, it would have been much better for the company to incrementally improve BBOS and stay with the dwindling core handset business. Instead of investing billions in BB10 and trying to sell those handsets, invest in the MDM business. What you would end up with is a highly profitable niche hardware business and a growing software business. You would still eventually be getting out of hardware or in to Android.
    Hmm no... it would of been much better had they acquired QNX earlier and released BB10 in 2010. BlackBerry sank because of their reputation with BBOS.

    Z30STA100-5/10.3.2.2876
    03-03-16 07:00 PM
  22. pdizzle27's Avatar
    Interesting question. One thing that comes to mind is that BlackBerry had the reputation of being the phone for business people. In my opinion, it took a step backwards with os10. As much as I loved the new os, things like no longer being able to synch with Outlook, losing business related apps that never updated to os10, and the loss of BIS, actually made it less productive for business. I think a good argument could be made that they would have been better off upgrading the old OS and incorporating better hardware (top of the line cameras etc). I think the final answer is that sales and marketing sucks and it didn't matter how good the product was.
    anon(9710735) likes this.
    03-03-16 07:07 PM
  23. Dave Bourque's Avatar
    Interesting question. One thing that comes to mind is that BlackBerry had the reputation of being the phone for business people. In my opinion, it took a step backwards with os10. As much as I loved the new os, things like no longer being able to synch with Outlook, losing business related apps that never updated to os10, and the loss of BIS, actually made it less productive for business. I think a good argument could be made that they would have been better off upgrading the old OS and incorporating better hardware (top of the line cameras etc). I think the final answer is that sales and marketing sucks and it didn't matter how good the product was.
    I can sync to outlook... not sure how you got that idea. Of course the marketing was awful too so that's a big factor in all this. They screwed up developer relations though. This is why the apps we want weren't on BB10 but available as an apk.

    Z30STA100-5/10.3.2.2876
    03-03-16 07:21 PM
  24. rthonpm's Avatar
    Interesting question. One thing that comes to mind is that BlackBerry had the reputation of being the phone for business people. In my opinion, it took a step backwards with os10. As much as I loved the new os, things like no longer being able to synch with Outlook, losing business related apps that never updated to os10, and the loss of BIS, actually made it less productive for business. I think a good argument could be made that they would have been better off upgrading the old OS and incorporating better hardware (top of the line cameras etc). I think the final answer is that sales and marketing sucks and it didn't matter how good the product was.
    Outlook sync was a feature left over from the days of POP email. Having native Exchange available on BB10 made it unnecessary for almost any business of size. As for apps, if the developers didn't want to convert from BBOS to BB10 there wasn't much BlackBerry could do about it, and likely any company relying on BBOS that heavily for their app audience is long gone now anyway. BIS was also a legacy product, and helped the downfall of BlackBerry. They were caught flatfooted by the adoption of LTE since BIS all but assumed a 2G data connection. Carriers also didn't want to pay the added fees, especially with market share dropping for the devices.

    There was nowhere left to build out BBOS. The memory limitations of the platform were all but obvious to anyone who saw what a comparable iOS or Android device of the time were capable of, especially since they were built on modern frameworks and platforms as opposed to a core OS long since pulled and kludged to offer more features.

    BlackBerry made the nearly fatal mistake of not dumping BBOS soon enough. All of this has been covered time and again here. This whole thread is more of the wrong headed thinking that previous success correlates to future success by staying the course. It doesn't work in technology, or any field.

    Posted via CB10
    03-04-16 05:33 AM
  25. pdizzle27's Avatar
    I can sync to outlook... not sure how you got that idea. Of course the marketing was awful too so that's a big factor in all this. They screwed up developer relations though. This is why the apps we want weren't on BB10 but available as an apk.

    Z30STA100-5/10.3.2.2876
    Could you synch to Outlook when the z10 was first released? You can check old Crackberry forums, and see that I wasn't the only one. I even had Tmobile transfer me to BlackBerry technical assistance, and they couldn't do it.
    03-04-16 06:58 AM
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